Image: Viena Kytöjoki / Lehtikuva

"It's hard to say what will happen if English continues to take over," said Taina Saarinen, who researches languages in higher education at Jyväskylä University.

Saarinen calls the phenomenon—which is also being seen in the other Nordics—"anglophone asymmetry".

"We're small countries who want to use attractive English-language programmes to draw in foreign students and researchers," she explained.

Nowadays it's not uncommon for Finnish researchers to only publish scholarly papers in English.

Given the dominant role of English in the wider academic world, wouldn't switching to English make sense?

Not according to Pirkko Nuolijärvi, who advocates on behalf of the country's two official languages.

"It's important that both languages are used in academic circles. If we don't, we may start losing words and expressions, which will lead to impoverished vocabularies in daily life, too,” said Nuolijärvi, who heads the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland.

"Janitor should speak English"

But in contrast to Saarinen and Nuolijärvi, Aalto University, which merged schools of technology, economics and design in 2010, says the more English, the better.

"We even want our janitor to be able to communicate in English," Mari-Anna Suurmunne, head of international relations at Aalto told Yle Nyheter. "Our new language strategy calls for a blend of teaching in Finnish, Swedish and English, but everyone who works here has to be able to speak English."