The advocacy work of civil society organizations – such as unions, NGOs, associations – to support the international community, as well as the work put in by universities to better inform and prepare international students for the Finnish work life and labor market, are bearing fruits.
To inform our internationalization efforts, we surveyed last Spring internationals – students and graduates, members and non-members, with education in the field of Business and Economics from universities. The scope of this survey was limited. The results and insights do not provide a comprehensive in-depth picture of the matter, but they do provide clues and signals about the situation of internationals and call for further research.
Amongst students, there seem to be a clear willingness to integrate and build a life in Finland. Near 90% of respondents declared wanting to stay in Finland post-graduation. Over 40% mentions liking components of the “Finnish dream”: nature, safety, trust, welfare.
This is encouraging and goes against the narrative of degree and nationality shopping that often surrounds conversations about international students’ poor retention. Degree or nationality shopping generally refers to the fact of going to a country to graduate and/or obtain nationality to improve one’s life and employability worldwide, with no plans to stay in the host country.
The number of new international students in Business and Economics field has increased by 25% over the past decade, a significant increase reflecting the government’s strategy to attract more foreign students to Finnish universities. Nowadays, each academic year, more students with international background than Swedish-speaking students start a Business and Economics degree in Finnish universities.
When comparing the eagerness to stay to the reality of who stays, there is a gap. According to governmental data sources (Vipunen*), around a third of students with a mother tongue other than native languages of Finland (Finnish, Swedish, Sami) ends up leaving Finland one year after graduating from a Finnish university in Business & Economics. But that emigration rate has been rather stable over the past decade, while the number of students has significantly increased. So, in reality, slightly more students than before are managing to stay, things are slowly improving.
Students are concerned about being able to find suitable work opportunities. Suitable work is on the mind of nearly a third of the student respondents that want to stay in Finland, no matter how positive they are about living here permanently otherwise.
And this concern seems anchored in the reality of their early experience with the Finnish job market. Little under 60% of the surveyed, students and graduates together, declared having had at least 1 “student” job experience in Finland. By that, we mean that they have had at least one opportunity for an internship or traineeship, summer job, student job, and the like. Student work experience is extremely valued by recruiters in Finland and rather common amongst native students; not having work experience impacts negatively on one’s chances to find employment post-graduation.
Having obtained a Finnish nationality seems to help when it comes to finding student work opportunities. Indeed, when separating respondents with international background based on nationality status, the number of respondents who found a student job rises to 70% for those with a Finnish nationality but drops to around half for the others.
We can infer that natives have an even higher chance to have gotten student work experience by graduation, which could partially explain the gap in employment rates 1 to 5 years after graduation between people whose mother tongue is native and the others.
Indeed, based again on Vipunen data, people with mother tongues other than native languages of Finland, face higher unemployment rates at least until 5 years post-graduation. At the same time, according to the same data sources, access to full-time employment has ramped up. In 2022, consistently over 40% of those who had graduated 1 to 5 years prior had a full-time job, the highest it has been in a decade. It may be the highest ever, as this detailed data on mother tongue, field of education and situation of student’s post-graduation is collected consistently only since 2013. This means that the quality and stability of employment of internationals graduating from Finnish universities have improved: a very positive sign.
The work continues. This year again, amongst other things, Ekonomit is supporting Tampere and Aalto universities in their thesis events, aiming to pair international students with Finnish companies in need of thesis workers This improves employment outcomes of students and lowers the threshold of employing internationals for companies. International students will get access to our Finnish work life skills course, arming them for the Finnish labour market, and many other support services for their employment.
*Vipunen – Education Statistics Finland – is based on data and registers collected by the Statistics Finland, the Finnish Ministry of Culture and Education and the Finnish National Agency for Education.