funds to support restructuring have been earmarked prominent leaders in finnish higher education including a dean of the university of helsinki and the rector of aalto university have suggested halving the number of academic units in universities and the university rectors council has prepared a proposal for merging units closing programmes merging fields of education and research and redistributing resources among units as an opportunity for universities to be in the driving seat for structural reforms aarrevaara and dobson the ministry has previously reached an agreement for universities finland to coordinate bottomup projects to reduce duplication in areas of significant programme overlap crossbinary collaboration has been less prevalent than intended while the acts regulating uas and universities do not allow crossbinary mergers