As I
am sitting in JAMKO's office as the "last man standing" (everyone
else has gone home), I would like to talk briefly about something that has been
stirring the students' unions of Finland lately. Apologies beforehand for this
longer-than-usual -post, I promise the next ones I write this week will be
shorter and funnier (or shorter at least). This post is longer because the
matter is of crucial importance.
As
many people know, the main job - the core of the very existence of JAMKO - is
trusteeship. Despite the wide
understanding that we are an events organiser (as that is what most people
see), we work every day with the students, for the students in every sector
imaginable - mainly in educational and social policy.
The
reason for bringing this up now, is what has been going on in Finland in the
past couple of weeks. Many people have, hopefully, heard that a group of
parliamentarians in Finland co-signed a legislative motion to introduce tuition
fees for overseas students (basically this means outside the EU and EEA). Some
of the reasons given were that this would ensure that the Finnish education
system remains competitive internationally; Finland should stop producing
labour force for "Anglo-Saxon" countries; fees would attract larger
volume of overseas students coming to Finland; education system can be modeled
after the British and American systems; and that it would make the students
stay in Finland after their studies.
The
motion caused quite a furore across Europe. Not only did the students unions in
Finland - SAMOK and SYL - take strong stands against the motion, the support
came from across Europe: letters of
support from Slovakian SRVS, Norwegian NSO, Slovenian SSU, Dutch LSVb, European
Students' Union (ESU) etc. (there is a link at the end of the blog to SAMOK's
sources you can go to check out if you want to find out more).
It
was quickly pointed out that the legislative motion was based on false presumptions
and is actually contradictory to findings from research. Trial runs on tuition
fees in the Nordic countries have actually shown that fees do not work; they do
not increase the number of overseas students applying to Scandinavian
universities/polytechnics, and students already stay in Finland and they pay
their education back in taxes after a few years. Just to point out a few
examples.
As
someone who has studied in Canada, the USA and the UK, I would like to take an
issue with one particular argument, which the parliamentarians who signed the
motion, got wrong. It is this idea that the Finnish education system could be
modeled after the British and American systems. This is frankly absurd. The
cultural, historical, economic, social and infrastructural differences between
Finland's education system and the Anglo-Saxon system are too different for
such a system to be directly transferable to Finnish universities/polytechnics.
When you go into university in one of the so called Anglo-Saxon countries, your school BECOMES
your home. You live on your campus. You eat, sleep, get ill, exercise,
socialise, live, love, hate, on your campus. Your campus has restaurants,
banks, clubs, bars, cafes. You use the school's OWN health center and doctors.
Your school OWNS gyms, swimming pools, sport halls, sports fields....And I
haven't even touched upon the differences between teaching! For all of this, it
does make sense to pay (at least a little). However, we do not have such
campuses, such educations systems in Finland; our education system is entirely
different.
Even
in the UK, which has traditionally attracted large numbers of overseas
students, the number for international applications has decreased due to a rise
in tuition fees last year. They are now in a situation where students who can
actually afford to pay (as the UK is stingy on scholarships), are already part
of a higher social and economic status, and they see the education as "a
pit stop" on their way to somewhere else or as a way to return to their
home country. Or even more alarmingly, they do not apply to the UK at all,
because they want to find value for their money.
So, to
think that by asking people to pay for something that has been free before the
number of people willing to come to study here will increase, is
purely false logic. Wouldn't it be wiser to aid the students to integrate to
Finland, help them to invest in our society, and then support them to network
Finland internationally? Isn't that more efficient way of ensuring Finland is
and becomes competitive in the international arena?
I do
not want to go on for too long about this, but as my last point, I would like
to say this. If, as research suggests, fees would decrease overseas students
coming here, can we really afford to lose the international talent and
innovation to some other country?
-
Reeta
More
information about the matter can be found here:
http://samok.fi/en/2013/01/09/samokin-ja-syln-kannanotto-maksuttoman-koulutuksen-puolesta-saa-tukea-sveitsilaiselta-sisarjarjestolta/
