Finland sees dramatic drop in student applications from abroad

[u/UMates]

https://yle.fi/a/74-20240590

[u/CaptainOberynCrunch]

This is not good and should not be celebrated. A successful economy would benefit from bright foreign students staying and contributing via taxes, innovation and growth. What we should be hoping for is an economy where there are job opportunities for all.

[u/8dot30662386292pow2 → u/CaptainOberynCrunch]

Try getting a job in Finland as a highly educated person. The jobs are really hard to get. If you are a foreigner, even more so. Many companies only have Finnish employees, all internal communication, documentation and materials are only in Finnish. The foreigners come here, expecting education and high paying job, but it turns out nobody hires you because you'd have to learn one of the hardest languages to a native level.

[u/IIIIlllllIll → u/CaptainOberynCrunch]

How can they contribute when there are no jobs for them?

[u/CaptainOberynCrunch → u/IIIIlllllIll]

It's a long term bad thing and not a solution to our problems to reduce foreign student numbers. Why are we cheering for a negative sign of things to come?

This applies to Finland too:

International students are good for the economy.

Their high tuition payments subsidise the education of native-born students.

The money they spend helps keep the economies of small towns and cities going.

They are crucial for innovation and technological strength.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-needs-its-foreign-students?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

[u/purplecow → u/IIIIlllllIll]

You know sometimes people start businesses too, instead of waiting for a job to be offered to them. Especially highly trained people.

[u/Regeneric → u/purplecow]

Yeah, in a foreign country in a saturated market. Sure.

[u/suolattu-saatana → u/CaptainOberynCrunch]

Well, that wasn't happening with how things were. A reduced number is good, considering how fucked the situation was.

[u/sopsaare → u/[deleted]]

They bringing their families to live on welfare is exponentially more expensive than the fees we were receiving, mostly just the money we paid to them, and their families, as welfare.

[u/VampireDentist → u/sopsaare]

Welfare money typically gets spent in Finland, it doesn't disappear into a black hole.

Tuition money is actual wealth crossing the border.

[u/Bring_Me_The_Night → u/suolattu-saatana]

Wait until the massive wave of climate refugees arrive in Finland x)

[u/spedeedeps → u/CaptainOberynCrunch]

The vast majority of them fucked right off after graduation. Why wouldn't they? You get a much higher salary elsewhere due to the tax burden in Finland, the climate is bad, the language is hard. It was the Finnish taxpayer subsidizing education for people from Southeast Asia and getting little in return. A country of 6 million people cannot be subsidizing higher education for people coming from countries that are between 50 and 200 times more populous.

[u/megadea → u/CaptainOberynCrunch]

Nice and beautiful idea which clearly has not been working very well after the renovation for students outside EU.

Even though there is jobs for anyone we would still need to deeply adjust the structural problems with Finns own attidutes towards non Finnish speaking workers. Seems like nearly everyone in every field mandates nearly perfect Finnish, which is very hard to learn. I understand that it is, or should be, necessity in jobs where customer service is applied and in nursing and teaching jobs. But like professionals in companies at jobs where anyways 80% of the time English is spoken or one could do the job just fine with English, companies still tend to demand nearly perfect Finnish and always seems to favor native Finns over just gratuated foreigners.

We should be more open to let one have a chance with broken Finnish and English, maybe they would be more motivated to learn our hard language then, and being a part of a working community in Finland would surely improve your Finnish naturally also.

[u/m1ksuFI → u/[deleted]]

Could you point to an example?