RECOGNITION OF FOREIGN DEGREES IN FINLAND

[biscayne]

I'm a nurse (proper Registered Nurse with Bachelors in Nursing Science and a Masters from a top 500 University) and was never able to get a job in Finland despite having reasonable Finnish - and another nurse on this forum who actually graduated from a Finnish University (english language programme) had the same experiece. It is not as easy to get hired as you might think and the salary for nurses in Finland is surprisingly low, lower than in many other EU countries.

The other thing I'd agree with is that, in some ways nursing is something you kind of do have to feel almost "called" to do. Not quite a vocation, as they used to say in the old days, but there is a grain of truth in it. Even as a proper Registered Nurse, you still have to deal with vomit, blood, awful wounds, urine and feces. Yes, Registered Nurses do less of the actual "caring" these days, a lot of those duties have been put in the hands of assistants and carers, but you do still have to do some of it, and rightly so. I don't know if nursing should be just used as a way to get into a country, but, if you think you could do it, then go for it.

[liliacea]

For job/further studies purposes,planning to move over to Finland & would like to know if i can get a job there or/and if its equivalent to the Finnish Bachelor Degree ! I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology.

If you have only a Bachelor’s Degree, I suppose finding a job here would be challenging, because a BA is not really translatable to Finland, as in not a lot of Finnish people just have a Bachelor’s Degree and they finish their studies at that point, and go find a job. What I’ve seen mostly are people finishing their Bachelor’s Degrees and moving onto a Master’s Degree - the BA and MA are almost connected in that sense (although you practically do have the chance to just do a Bachelor’s but, I’ve never seen or met anyone personally finishing their studies at that level - at least sociology majors.) I guess with only a Bachelor’s Degree, Finnish employers would think you’re kind of “incomplete”, as in you’d be expected to start doing your Master’s, even in the case you got employed or got an internship etc.
But maybe what I personally did might give you an idea: I am finishing this month my Bachelor’s Degree with two majors (in sociology and in communications.) What I basically did was to apply to a Master’s Degree in University of Helsinki. If you have a major in sociology, you can apply to two different master’s programmes in University of Helsinki: one is called “Ethnic Relations, Cultural Diversity and Integration” (ERI) and the other one is “Research Master’s Degree In Social Sciences.” (REMS) As you can understand from the title, the second one will lead you to more of an specifically academic path, but graduating from ERI you could also work in some NGOs etc. - besides having the academic career option. (I was acccepted to the ERI programme btw.)
When it comes to work, I knew that my chances were slim to zero (I can speak Finnish fluently) finding a job in Finland with a Sociology Bachelor, but my professor at my university here in Turkey offered me a job - she has a qualitative research company and essentially she would hire me to do some coding in some of the projects she is working on. (“Coding” as in a process in qualitative research - so it’s quite different from the “coding” in computer sciences or whatever I should call it.) So I’m going to do remote work. You could also maybe look into similar options/job offers in your home country (Germany) - at least if you’re into qualitative research. So yeah, I guess the most “doable” option would be doing remote work and studying for a Master’s Degree in Finland. (At least I think it is the most “doable” option for a sociology major, which is why it is the path I took.)
And to answer your first original question, I personally did nothing extra to get my degree "recognized" while applying to University of Helsinki. They work with University Admissions Finland (a centralized system for master's applications) to ensure the originality and do the initial processing of the documents. Although there are some specific requirements for certain countries (like getting your diploma approved/stamped/etc. by notary), Germany did not have any specific requirements as far as I can remember (if you got your BA from a German University.)

[Tiffani]

Thanks alot for your replys & informative options/ideas,am very much greatful but shocked to hear that it can be very difficult for a whole professional registered nurse with a Bachelors degree in nursing to get a job /be hired as a nurse in Finland or virtually difficult?????? think its the opposite of Germany that is even exporting its nusring training to third world countries and importing them back to Germany.Why is Finland admitting many students to their Bachelors degree in Nursing but dont want to hire some?

[Oho]

2. Finland earns money from foreign students

Really?

The schools earn but Finland I sincerely doubt it..... Fact of the matter is that it makes more fiscal sense for schools to recruit foreign students than Finnish because schools are better compensated in form of budget money for foreign students. It also seems Finnish universities are wetting their panties over foreign students because they seem to have a strong consensus feeling Finnish are good for nothing, they might very well be right.

[Beep_Boop]

And these students are generally spending a minimum of 7000e foreign funds into the Finnish economy (and it's been raised to 8400e this year).

Another point to add to yours is that foreign students who came here to study (EU or non-EU) don't have access to the public money (whether directly through Kela or indirectly through TE-palvelut)

[Oho]

"each full-time basic degree student costs an average of 2800 euros annually. By this same yardstick, the cost at polytechnics is some 2300 euros."

There is no us, get that.

"If the cost of education at all tertiary institutions is divided by the number of students, the average price is around 7,000 euros a year. At polytechnics, costs are slightly higher."

The prices you quoted are stripped of any proportion of fixed cost, so no cigar, anyway I guess one more reason to admit only foreign students, they come at roughly 40% of the cost, or perhaps not. If they need to attract foreign students to keep some degree programmes alive perhaps a better alternative would be allowing them to die. Even sillier is to establish degree porgrammes almost exclusively for foreign students.

VATT is politically controlled instance with political agenda headed at the time by a guy who thinks all ills of the Finnish society could be fixed by removing any and all checks on immigration, basically he thinks Finnish are !"#¤%. VATT hardly tries to provide policy makers with well researched and measured information rather it seems hell bent at proving how the pre-ordained policy decisions were correct and thus justify them, this is Soviet Finland with hardly any actual political pluralism.

Incidentally Finnish instruction in Finnish universities really only took off in the late twenties, looks like its gonna be past its best at the latest a century or so later sorry if I see it as something to worth lamenting. Finnish is the only language I can claim know at all, well apart from C, I'd be sad to see it relegated primarily if not exclusively to 'lower' walks of life.

And wrong, foreign students even those originating from outside EU are eligible to some benefits even if not direct monetary compensation. Housing, meals, YTHS.. all supported by tax payer money. Not only that if they run out of funds they are eligible to social support which should invalidate their RP's but in practice does not because of confidentiality clauses.

Anyway it seems impossible to disagree on any policy decisions concerning foreign nationals, if one considers them too permissive, without being labeled a racist. Sort of liberating that as no need for pretenses remain but also more than just a tad false when the ire was all but strictly aimed at the policy makers.