Urpo Harva was the first professor of the School of Social Sciences and thereby the University of Tampere. He was appointed professor of adult education by Chancellor Väinö Voionmaa on 19 February 1946.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Harva was characterised as the ‘angry young man’ of his time. Harva highlighted the view that adult education constituted general education and wanted to distinguish it from the more traditional notion that the studying of adults was for the purpose of character formation.