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by onnellinen
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Studying in Finland

Studying in Finland_b0169455_14312622.jpg

I want to tell to you little about where and what I study. As you most likely have already noticed, we live in Tampere. That is where my school, Tampere University of Applied Sciences is also located. It’s a school of about 5 311 students. That certainly does not make it the largest school in Finland, and neither the smallest but perhaps an average size. The largest applied science university is naturally in the capital area, Helsinki, and has around 13 thousand students.

Universities of applied sciences carry a couple of names. They are referred as School of Higher Vocational Education and Polytechnics. It is good to know that polytechnics, like the school I study in, are not universities. The main difference is that universities produce new research content where as polytechnics apply previously created content. Therefore a graduate from polytechnic is not a university graduate.

Studying in Finland is quite cheap. During the 3-4 years of study students in Finnish polytechnics don’t pay tuition fees. Study books are offered by the school so there is no need to spend money on literature. Though once I had to buy a work-book for studying Spanish.

At the time of study, students receive different benefits from the social security service according to their living circumstances. Everybody gets the monthly study benefit to their bank accounts. It can be around 39 580 yens per month at maximum. Many things have an effect to it, for example, age and marital status. In addition there is the housing benefit for students. It varies according to the amount of rent, income and other things. At max it can be 26 777 yens.

So considering that there is no tuition fees or books to buy, and the government is paying 66 357 yens per month to your account, studying becomes quite cheap. In fact some people even save money by studying.

My studies take 3,5 years. In addition to sitting in the class rooms, my studies include 5 moths of exchange and another 5 months of practical training. In most polytechnics exchange is not included, but in my line of study it is a must. So at the beginning of third year all the Finnish students from my class go abroad to do their exchange. Our school has quite a nice selection of partner universities around the world, to which students can go to do their exchange. You already know that I'm going to Oita, Japan.

After the exchange most students start with their practical training or in other words the internship. That can be done in any company around the world. Oftentimes students have special interest to one country so they try to find their training placement from that particular country. Indeed every student needs to find the internship company on their own. I wish to find a company from Japan, but unfortunately internship scheme is not very familiar to Japanese companies.

Meanwhile doing the internship in a company student should start to probe a topic for the final thesis. Final thesis is the final large research work done before graduation. Ideally it is done for a company. In many occasions the company pays for the research. After that is done studies should be already at the end. That was the 3,5 years of study in brief.

The area of study for me is business and administration and international business in particular. We learn various things from accounting to managing people and running businesses. Overall quite practical stuff I would say.

Teaching language is purely English. Half of the students of our class are from abroad and the other half from Finland. It is a nice mix of cultures and languages, and an enjoyable environment to study. Unfortunately however, we have no students from Japan.

If you’re interested you can check out some of the recent things that students have done in our school from our school’s blog.

Thanks for reading. To the end, I would like to ask if anyone is interest to come to study in Finland? By now, I know doruko has already done it.
by onnellinen | 2009-05-13 00:02