Every year on Sleepyhead Day, 27 July, JEF Finland awards its “European Wake-Up Call” to a Finnish actor that should better take into account the importance of EU themes and participate more actively in the debate on Europe. This year, the award goes to Finnish higher education institutions.
Dear leadership of Finnish higher education institutions,
According to national higher education policy guidelines, mobility periods should be a natural part of higher education studies. Yet fewer and fewer Finnish higher education students go on student exchange. The popularity of exchange studies among Finnish higher education students has been declining since 2016 – this year marking the fifth year in a row.
This year, we are awarding the European Wake-Up Call to Finland’s higher education institutions, because they have failed to adequately support students’ international mobility.
More than half of the students from Finland who go abroad do so through the Erasmus+ programme, the EU’s flagship programme for mobility and international cooperation in the fields of education, youth and sport. Since 1992, more than 300,000 Finns have taken part in mobility periods under Erasmus+ and its predecessor programmes. Students who take part in the programme get to study or complete a work placement in another country, for example, while also developing their language skills, international competence and cooperation skills. The experience gained on exchange benefits not only the individual but society as a whole.
The EU has invested particularly heavily in developing the Erasmus+ programme in recent years, and Erasmus is often considered one of the most successful European projects of all time. It is therefore no surprise that the popularity of Erasmus+ mobility has risen at the European level. Yet the number of Finnish exchange students has decreased, and in recent years Finland has received more higher education exchange students than it has sent abroad.
The number of participants in Erasmus exchanges and other exchange programmes dropped sharply in 2020 in particular, due to the pandemic, but five years of continuous decline cannot be blamed on COVID-19 alone. Finnish higher education institutions must take the decline in student international mobility seriously and act so that mobility – through Erasmus+ as well as other exchange programmes – returns to at least the level it was at before the decline began. Higher education institutions have not been left without support in this task: the Commission has almost doubled its Erasmus+ budget for the 2021–2027 programming period, giving more and more European students the opportunity to study or complete a placement in another country.
Higher education institutions can no longer close their eyes and hit snooze in the face of this challenge. Finnish universities and universities of applied sciences must support students’ exchange studies, for example by offering degrees in line with the European framework and by recognising studies completed on exchange as part of degrees. Higher education institutions must also actively inform students about exchange opportunities and encourage them towards international mobility.
Finnish higher education students falling behind on internationalisation is not in the interest of our society. With this European Wake-Up Call, we challenge higher education institutions to find out why Finnish students are no longer seeking out exchange studies, and to work with students to improve mobility opportunities.
With cooperative regards,
JEF Finland
Risto Rajala
President
[email protected]
0400563080