The international academic success of Finnish secondary schooling in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the triumph of the Finnish technology company NOKIA have stimulated national ambitions to improve higher education institutions in Finland. Because secondary schooling and technology in Finland receive world recognition, increased national pressure to raise higher education recognition has followed. Since the early 1990s, the Finnish government has engaged in a reform process of higher education, mainly focusing on polytechnics, to bolster international recognition and success. It was the Bologna Declaration in 1999 that really triggered reform in Finland's universities. From degree restructuring to the legal, organizational, and financial repositioning, Finnish universities saw great reform to match the success of secondary schooling and technology. In this article, the author addresses the Finnish ambitions for higher education reform and discusses Finnish higher education reforms since 2007. Before addressing the Finnish ambitions for higher education reform, the author examines the history of higher education in Finland. The author concludes that although Finnish professors will face a somewhat brutal new reality as the university reforms begin, the universities are likely to succeed because Finland is different from other countries in key areas. They are not blase like institutions in many older and wealthier nations. Their whole modern history is one of effort and struggle; learning how to be a first-world nation is in Finland's history. (Contains 1 table and 2 notes.)