Just over half of foreign graduates stayed on one year after graduating from a Finnish university to work, according to data released by the country’s Centre for International Mobility.
The data, which looked at 1,704 foreign students who graduated in 2009, found that 51% were in work a year later, while 48% were still in employment in 2012.
Five years on, 44% of foreign graduates were employed in the country, while almost a third (32%) had left Finland.
“The data doesn’t support the common belief that most international students just come here for the course and leave”
Irma Garam, research manager at CIMO, said she was surprised that so many international graduates stayed on to work in Finland.
“The data doesn’t support the common belief that most international students just come here for the course and leave,” she told The PIE News.
Finland’s current post-study policy allows non-EU students to apply for a one year residence permit extension to look for work after graduation.
Markus Laitinen, head of international affairs at the University of Helsinki, credits these policies for part of the reason the country retains graduates.
“I think one of the reasons why a good number of graduates stay, is simply because they can,” he told The PIE News. “I mean in terms of being allowed to stay in the country after graduation even if they are not immediately employed. Finland has relatively good policies on this.
“The fact that we recruit international students from Finland also contributes to this,” he added.
Over 80% of foreign graduates who completed their studies in 2009 had a degree from either a university of applied science or a master’s degree.
Foreign graduates from universities of applied sciences found work more easily, according to the data, with 54% working in the first year, and 49% five years after graduation.
On the other hand, fewer master’s degree graduates were employed in Finland: 44% after one year, and only 37% after five years.
The report attributed this drop to the fact that many international master’s programmes don’t prepare students for the Finnish labour market, but for further studies or an international career.
“The objective of degrees from universities of applied sciences is more clearly to get graduates employed in the Finnish labour market; they often include work-based training which is often carried out in Finland,” the report said.
Technology and transport, as well as social sciences, business and administration were the most popular for foreign graduates, accounting for 1,026 graduates.
“In the fields with the most foreign students, technology graduates had a 2% better than average employment rate across all the three years examined,” the report said.
“Whereas the employment rate of those who had studied business and administration was 5-6% poorer than average.”
“I think one of the reasons why a good number of graduates stay, is simply because they can”
In 2015, there were 20,353 international students studying at HEIs in the country, according to Statistics Finland, a number that has been consistently rising over recent years.
However, there are concerns that this rise may be curbed with the introduction of tuition fees for non-EU students, which will be implemented next year.
“I suppose many of the international students come here to study with a further career in Finland already in their mind,” said Garam.
“They are interested and ready to make their career in Finland. It seems that so far Finland has been able to answer to this and provide jobs. Hopefully this will continue also in the future.”
Laitinen praised the CIMO study as a “step in the right direction” in Finland’s efforts to understand it foreign graduates. “But there is still quite a lot we do not know,” he said, underling the need for more comparable and refined data on employability and many other issues, including alumni relations.
“Foreign graduates who leave the country after graduation can be just as or even more important to Finland and to the university as the ones who stay in the country,” he said.
