Lappeenranta staff fear LAB functions are shifting to Lahti

Staff at LAB University of Applied Sciences in Lappeenranta fear the city will lose teaching and jobs to Lahti after ongoing change negotiations, Yle reports. The university says its operations in Lappeenranta are not declining and that it has strengthened its teaching there.

Tiia Puolakka, an expert at LAB, said staff are concerned about the negotiations’ effects on local jobs, the university’s future and the vitality of South Karelia. She fears Lappeenranta could lose teaching and the relatively few leadership positions it has to Lahti.

LAB and Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology, known as LUT, recently announced change negotiations involving nearly 1,300 people in Lappeenranta and Lahti. LUT could dismiss up to 90 employees and LAB up to 70. LUT has excluded research and teaching staff from its negotiations.

Puolakka said research, development and innovation work is concentrated in Lahti. Fewer than 10 of the approximately 40 people in her team work in Lappeenranta, she said, adding that she believes Lahti is also recruiting more staff.

She said Lappeenranta had lost more study programmes and places than Lahti in recent years. LAB has moved fine arts teaching from Lappeenranta to Lahti, and its business administration programme specialising in marketing is now ending. Puolakka said the changes had drawn little discussion locally, although feedback from businesses had been “astonished”.

She also suggested LAB’s interests may not have been championed strongly enough in Lappeenranta, where attention has focused on LUT. Visitors to LAB’s Skinnarila campus often refer to it as the university, she said, reflecting how the two institutions are sometimes seen as one.

LAB rector Turo Kilpeläinen said the university considers South Karelia just as important as Päijät-Häme, the region around Lahti. He said LAB aims to support the skills, vitality and competitiveness of both regions, including the growth and internationalisation of small and medium-sized businesses.

Kilpeläinen said the number of teaching staff in Lappeenranta had grown more than in Lahti between LAB’s establishment in 2020 and 2026. He said the university had also expanded health and social care training and introduced programmes in electrical and automation engineering and laboratory analysis. The number of places available for degree studies in Lappeenranta increased by about 10 per cent between 2022 and 2027, he said, describing the changes as a renewal of education rather than a cutback.

Lappeenranta Mayor Tuomo Sallinen said he understood the concerns but maintained that LAB had grown stronger in the city. LUT rector Juha-Matti Saksa urged people to avoid setting the cities against each other, saying there was no factual basis for claiming that Lappeenranta was a secondary investment destination. He said two strong campuses could help build a larger and more internationally competitive university.