With an established, well-respected and quality-controlled education system, Finland is becoming the choice of some of the world’s leading postgraduate students. Education is highly valued in Finland and the high standard of education forms one of the cornerstones of the Finnish national strategy.
20 universities and 29 polytechnics provide higher education in Finland. All these institutions are internationally oriented and the country’s good reputation in higher education, combined with the wide range of courses offered in English, attracts interest among an increasing number of international students. At present, Finnish institutions of higher education offer more than 350 study programmes in English. Some of these programmes are short courses that usually can only be taken as part of an exchange programme - other, broader-based programmes take several years to complete and lead to an official Finnish higher education degree.
An increasing number of these programmes are offered at the masters level. The quality of scientific research in Finland is high. Systematic, professional research training is available in about one hundred graduate schools that are attached to Finnish universities and cover all the main areas of research. Students attend top-level intensive courses and receive research tutoring in Finland’s leading research teams that work in close collaboration with other national and international research centres.
Some institutions of higher education offer complete postgraduate degree programmes in English. In Finnish universities, lectures, seminars, independent work and exams have traditionally been the main study methods. Developing an approach to your study that is free and your own is regarded as common in Finland. Many students are also surprised at the strong emphasis on self-study and the analysis of texts as a source of information compared with lectures. Additional, the close relationship enjoyed between postgraduate students and their teachers is often a surprise to international students - this is an important feature of the postgraduate experience and helps students to develop their own unique approach to studying.
The Centre for International Mobility (CIMO) and a number of other organisations grant scholarships for postgraduate studies and research in Finland. There are also certain scholarship programmes in which the grant is always applied by a hosting Finnish university department or university research institute. CIMO awards scholarships for postgraduate students and young researchers who have completed a master or doctoral level degree, as well as for teachers and administrative staff from universities abroad. In general, there are two types of scholarships: individual scholarships which young researchers apply for themselves; and host fellowships which are applied for by the Finnish higher education departments wishing to host researchers and postgraduates.
They can be found listed by field of study on the Discover Finland website at finland.cimo.fi (the section on studying international programmes).