How to succeed in higher education in Finland?
When browsing through various websites of Finnish higher education institutions (HEIs), you notice that the institutions emphasize the difference between studying in Finnish higher education and studying in some other country. But what does that actually mean? What are the differences between the Finnish system and a system in a completely different culture? The Finnish higher education system – simple or not? To understand the way of studying in Finnish HEIs, you need to start by exploring the Finnish culture, which is a complex mix of different traits. Two characteristics come up especially. The first is the emphasis of individuality. In the Finnish culture people are expected to take considerable responsibility of their own lives. In more collective cultures, people might rely on communities of different types in their life planning, such as their family or relatives. The second is the focus on independence. In the Finnish culture, it is highly appreciated to control your own life, to make independent choices and to take responsibility of them. When studying in countries with the collective culture as a strong influencer, the focus is on teacher centered teaching methods. The Finnish way of studying, strongly affected by our individual culture, focuses more on student centered teaching methods and emphasizes the responsibility of the students as active agents in their own learning. In the Finnish world of HEIs there is a sense of equality between teachers and students. In more collective cultures the teacher is considered as a know-it-all. Do not get intimidated by all this. You can learn to find your way and succeed in the Finnish world of higher education. Start by digging into your past. You have probably already acquired a vast collection of different study skills during your life. It is also equally important to understand, that while the previously learned study skills are useful, you might have to modify them suitable for studying in a Finnish higher education institution. And also, you might have to learn some totally new skills as well. The skills you need in order to survive in Finnish higher education In the Finnish universities and universities of applied sciences, study and learning skills are highly emphasized. Here are some examples (based on e.g. Kangasniemi & Murtonen 2017): Self-knowledge: Start by aiming to form an image of the skills and knowledge base, that you already have, and of the skills and knowledge you still need to learn to reach your goals. Not only in studying but also in working life, the key skill is to be able to map your competences. Self-direction: Self-direction has a major role in the Finnish world of higher education. For many students coming outside of Finland, this might be the key element which makes the Finnish way of studying so difficult to take in. Self-direction means, that you take responsibility of your own learning. You independently aim for understanding, and also for developing your thinking and expertise. Time management: The Finnish higher education gives you considerable freedom. But with that freedom comes responsibility. The courses take up a lot of your time and include also significant amount of independent work in addition to contact lessons, which need to fit into your everyday life. If you start studying in a somewhat new language, remember that it might take you longer to take on materials. Planning skills: Be prepared to plan the schedule of completing your degree including a yearly plan for courses to be finished. In addition to scheduling your studies, consider how you want your degree to look like. When planning, keep your focus in your future: what would be a good and useful mix of studies for the working life? Self-direction plays a strong part here as you ponder and find out things yourself. Readiness for team work: One of the most central ways to work around a course theme is to team work. This requires for you to be ready to communicate as you are not the only one in the team. Think of yourself in a group. What are your strengths and weaknesses? Step by step you create self-knowledge of you as a team member. Need tools for your survival kit? If you want to prepare yourself before pursuing degree studies in higher education, consider brushing up your study skills as well as Finnish language skills in the Metropolia Preparatory Education for Studies at the University of Applied Sciences for Immigrants, open for applications in August. Online version of the preparatory education, including a course in developing your study skills, is offered during the year 2019 by the development project Valmentavasta Valmiiksi, so stay tuned. Sources: Kangasniemi, Mari & Murtonen, Mari. 2017. Yliopiston toimijoiden näkemyksiä vastuullisen yliopisto- opiskelijan taidoista. Yliopistopedagogiikka. 24:1. https://yliopistopedagogiikka.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/kangasniemi-murtonen_press.pdf AMK-opintoihin valmentavat koulutukset maahanmuuttajille –website. 11.5.2018. http://www.metropolia.fi/koulutukset/maahanmuuttajille/ Valmentavasta Valmiiksi - project website. 11.5.2018. http://www.metropolia.fi/tutkimus-kehittaminen-ja-innovaatiot/hankkeet/valmentavasta-valmiiksi/
Supporting Highly Educated Immigrants’ Career Paths in Finland
Since 2016, SIMHE-Metropolia has been actively developing and modelling its services to find out ways to improve highly educated immigrants’ education and employment possibilities in Finland. The number of customers at SIMHE-Metropolia has risen steadily over the past two years totalling in over 550 users for Guidance and Counselling and Recognition of Competences services in 2017. Creating a sustainable yet flexible method for recognising immigrants' competences SIMHE-Metropolia first piloted recognition of competences for highly educated immigrants in the field of technology in spring 2016 with some 30 customers to establish what would be the best method and participant criteria for the process. The current method, Mapping of Competences, has now been carried out in the fields of technology and business thrice since autumn 2016 with some 150 customers. The choice of fields was based on them not being regulated professions in Finland and Metropolia offers Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes in both fields. Mapping of Competences is managed and conducted by SIMHE-Metropolia. The field-related expertise is provided by heads of degree programmes or departments who work in the fields of technology and/or business at Metropolia. In autumn 2017, the Mapping of Competences service was also offered for suitable customers through Public employment and business services (TE Services) in Uusimaa region with almost 60 customers along with some 25 customers who entered the process through SIMHE-Metropolia’s own registration path. The continuation of the cooperation with TE Services is yet to be realised later in 2018. Recognition of Prior Learning is also needed for those not currently in higher education Recognising existing skills and competences is not a new concept in university of applied sciences as Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is strongly supported in study planning for example at Metropolia to create individual learning paths for degree students. SIMHE-Metropolia’s service thus augments and modifies RPL concept to highly educated immigrants who are not able to use such services as they are not registered in higher education institution in Finland. The official Recognition and Comparability of International Qualifications is conducted by Finnish National Agency for Education whereas SIMHE-Metropolia’s service aims at taking a more practical approach for recognising competences by helping customers to make their foreign qualifications and competences also more familiar to the Finnish employers. Self-knowledge and understanding of the Finnish context make a difference Education is highly appreciated in Finland, but being a highly educated immigrant in Finland does not always result in swift access to education or work. Immigrants often lack an inherent knowledge of the Finnish society and culture, they may lack sufficient language skills to enter in their field of expertise, and most importantly, they are not certain how their existing competences match with the Finnish requirements. Even though educated immigrants are needed in the Finnish labour market, we tend to run somewhat homespun and closed labour market in Finland (Kauppalehti 29.1. 2018). As customers are in a centre in Mapping of Competences, the aim is to offer both individual encounters in addition to group meetings throughout the process by helping customers to understand how their formerly acquired skills and competences match with the Finnish requirements find suitable educational paths, when applicable support employment and obtain information and ideas on various ways for job-search in Finland be able to express their competences better Now I know, where I am SIMHE-Metropolia's customers share common features like high level of education and being of foreign origin, but they are yet a very heterogeneous group of people with varied backgrounds, hopes and dreams how to live their lives in Finland. The best achievement over the past two years we have run the service, is to see how we have been able to empower people and give them tools for building possible career paths. Now that we have developed the ways to support self-knowledge and growth in more localised professional identity through our services, the next steps are to create even more ways to match the job-searching talents with those in need of skilled workforce. The existing events like Recruitment and Matching Morning by COME project help immigrants to meet up and network with employers-to-be. The road is still rocky and bendy, yet a lot has been accomplished by far. The most important thing is to include immigrants to the Finnish society by not always emphasising what they may not have, but rather embrace a feeble question raised by one of our customers: What if I am perfect already? More information: Maahanmuuton vastuukorkeakoulutoiminta Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriön julkaisuja 2017:38 https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/handle/10024/80706 Työ- ja elinkeinoministeriön julkaisuja.Työelämä 36/2017 Maahanmuuttajien koulutuspolkujen nopeuttaminen ja joustavat siirtymät -työryhmän loppuraportti ja toimenpide-esitykset http://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/80625/TEMjul_36_2017_verkkojulkaisu.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Kauppalehti 29.1. 2018 https://www.kauppalehti.fi/uutiset/uutinen/HzNP4peF?ref=ampparit:730b&ext=ampparit Mäki, Kimmo. 5.12. 2017 Osaamme sanoittaa osaamista http://www.amkverkkovirta.fi/osaammeko-sanoittaa-osaamista
Highly skilled immigrants aboard to build Finland
Pedro Góis (2017) informs that in USA alone, immigrants have been involved with founding companies such as “Google, Intel, WhatsApp, PayPal, eBay, Tesla, and Yahoo” and even though immigrants “make up less than 15 percent of the US population, skilled immigrants account for over half of Silicon Valley start-ups and over half of patents”. Could this be achieved in Finland as well? Building companies operating in English and having international potential such as the IT companies Góis mentioned will keep being created in Finland. However, working in many professional fields here requires the knowledge of our national language(s), mainly Finnish but speaking also Swedish can be an advantage. The language skills and navigating how our education and work-life operates typically takes time in the beginning. Yet they are significant puzzle pieces to integration. Back to studying basics? Anything human rarely surprises me, but I must say that the first time I heard a foreigner having a Bachelor´s Degree Certificate telling me he is studying in Finnish Basic Education - I went speechless. Basic Education is the school Finnish youngsters nearly always complete by the age of seventeen (EDUFI 2017a). Sadly, we in SIMHE-Metropolia have had a handful of clients like him who have taken too many steps backwards. SIMHE-Metropolia: 1) aims for faster integration It touches my heart when a client says after a thank you that they wish they had met me X years (that number could range from two to multiple years) earlier. Thus, I completely agree with the Minister of Education, Ms. Sanni Grahn-Laasonen, “We cannot afford to miss or waste anyone’s skills.” (Ministry of Education and Culture 2017b) and therefore need to better and faster recognize and utilize immigrants’ existing skills. 2) guides highly skilled immigrants My first three months in SIMHE-Metropolia have flown by fast because there is no shortage of clients. We guide those immigrants who reside in Finland but are not currently degree students in higher education (=HE) here. The minimum criteria to become a SIMHE client is that one is eligible to apply to HE in their home country and therefore in Finland as well. Actually, most of our clients already have at least one HE degree. 3) helps to steer multiple ways SIMHE-Metropolia has many services which we constantly develop. I mainly focus on group and personal guidance. In personal guidance discussions, we reserve an hour so we can holistically go through the immigrant´s situation and possible options. We focus on the topics they want, most typically connected to studies and career. SIMHE-Metropolia has been operating as of spring 2016 and already some of our clients have succeeded in gaining admission to studies or work where they were hoping. New initiatives for integration When it comes to degree studies, in my opinion vocational institutions are further with flexible options like apprenticeship training and competence-based qualification (terms from EDUFI 2017b). Fortunately, there is a momentum in Finland to accelerating immigrants’ integration seen in for example the launch of International House of Helsinki and that Espoo adopted English as their third official language. The Minister of Education allocated in total 5.5 million euros to various measures promoting development of for instance immigrants´ educational paths (Ministry of Education and Culture 2017a). From prep courses to graduates Some HE institutions like Metropolia University of Applied Sciences (UAS) have preparatory courses for immigrants. One of the projects which received funding from the Minister of Education is called in Finnish “Valmentavasta valmiiksi” where we in Metropolia UAS have teamed up with eight other UAS to develop preparatory courses. The idea is to develop them to be more nationally compatible and that the student who wants to graduate with a degree in higher education on that field would have a clear path for that. Utilizing everyone’s skills I have met so many clever and inspiring immigrants, most of whom are eager to stay and become full members of the Finnish society as fast as possible. Thus, I hope that initiatives like the above mentioned will help to make it more and more possible. I wish work places will to a greater extent take advantage of the diverse skills and ideas our multilingual and -cultural clients can bring. Sources: EDUFI (2017a) Finnish National Agency for Education. Education system in Finland picture available at http://www.oph.fi/english/education_system [retrieved 1.12.2017] EDUFI (2017b) Finnish National Agency for Education. Opetushallinnon sanasto available at http://www03.oph.fi/sanasto/listaakaikki_s.asp [retrieved 1.12.2017] Góis, Pedro (2017) Facing the human capital challenges of the 21st century’s new era of mobility: Migrant populations in higher education – students, academics, researchers. Keynote lecture, 13 December 2016 published in Käyhkö, Katinka; Bontenbal, Ilona & Bogdanoff, Minna (Eds.), "Open the doors!": Migrants in Higher Education: Fostering Cooperation at Universities Seminar 13.-14.12.2016 in Jyväskylä. Available also online: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-39-6977-6 Ministry of Education and Culture (2017a) Solutions for accelerating immigrants’ educational paths are sought and supported. Press release published in 11.8.2017 at http://minedu.fi/artikkeli/-/asset_publisher/maahanmuuttajien-koulutuspolkuja-vauhditetaan?_101_INSTANCE_0R8wCyp3oebu_languageId=en_US [retrieved 1.12.2017] Ministry of Education and Culture (2017b) Steering group: We need better ways to recognise immigrants’ skills. Press release 25.9.2017 published in English on 29.9.2017 at http://minedu.fi/en/article/-/asset_publisher/maahanmuuttajien-osaaminen-tunnistettava-nykyista-paremmin [retrieved 1.12.2017]
Blog introduces information, tips and insights that help international talents with a higher education background to integrate and find their study and career paths in Finland. The blog is part of Metropolia’s #talentboost actions.
Outi Lemettinen (head editor)
Riikka Wallin
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