The median age of graduates in Finland is 28 years.

Several changes need to be considered if Finland is to decrease the average age of students entering higher education.

A new report evaluating Finland’s innovation system has highlighted the delayed entry of Finland’s highly educated people into the workforce. The average age of new university students in Finland is 21.6 years, and the median age of graduates is 28, among the highest in the OECD.

The innovation report is not the first to consider the problem of ‘late graduation’. Finnish students are late starters, but factors also slow down transition to working life.

According to data published as part of the Eurostudent project, about 10 per cent of female students and 7 per cent of males were aged 26 or over. In countries such as France and Italy, the great majority of first year students are younger than 20, but in Finland, around 90 per cent are aged between 20 and 25. Why?

Several reports blame the centralised processes used to allocate study places, and the university admissions system. Universities base their intakes on graduate targets set by the education ministry. These are based on estimated labour market needs. The study places available may not match students’ aspirations.

In addition, universities run their own admissions tests, which vary widely among institutions. In 2008 the share of new university students that matriculated the same year was only 29 per cent. Some students apply several times before getting onto their preferred programme, leading to a delay that can last years.

Late bloomers

Compounding the problem caused by late entry, Finnish students also take longer to complete than students elsewhere. One issue here is that Finnish students usually study beyond the first degree. Although Finland has adapted to the Bologna process, whereby a three-year bachelor degree is the first degree, it seems Finnish workplaces do not acknowledge the bachelor degree as meeting the ‘barrier to entry’ required to work as a professional in many disciplines.

Also, most students must work to support themselves. Finnish students typically fly from the family nest when they go to university. According to Eurostudent, only 4 per cent of Finnish students live with their parents. A further 29 per cent live in some form of student accommodation and 68 per cent live in their own rented or sub-let accommodation.

Paying rent costs money, and Finnish students support themselves via employment (42 per cent of income is from this source), state welfare and loan schemes (40 per cent) and parents (18 per cent). However, working students are not exactly rare in other parts of Europe: students in seven of the 21 countries in the Eurostudent project earned a higher proportion of their income through the job market than did the Finns.

Another cause for delay in graduation, but one not mentioned in recent Finnish reports, is the universal conscription requirement for men between 18 and 28. Each year, around 27,000 young men start their national service of six, nine or 12 months. Many will eventually be higher education students. The study delay for someone opting for 12 months’ national service might be as much as two years, depending on intake date.

What should be done to speed up students’ progress into the high-knowledge workforce? In one sense, the answers are simple: break down structural barriers, improve targeted welfare and increase incentives for students’ timely complete. There is certainly no reason why many study programmes could not admit most students on the basis of results achieved at school. Additional processes will always be required for some programmes, but not all. Many much larger systems get by with ‘automatic’ admission systems, but there is always going to be a need to ensure that equity and other considerations are dealt with.

Welfare systems are usually cautious in doling out the public’s money, as they should be. However, it is almost pointless setting limits (say for rent) that are far short of market demands. Governments are fond of punishing under-achievement, but why not reward exemplary performance? Portions of student debts built up via loan schemes could be ‘forgiven’ if students meet certain progress criteria.

The Economic Survey of Finland report recommends fees as a way to increase students’ incentives for completion. In some ways, tuition fees for domestic students seem inevitable, especially for someone from Australia, which reintroduced fees in 1989, after their abolition from 1974. Finns might not see it that way.

Ian Dobson - HT
Lehtikuva - Mikko Stig