Theme editors: Francesca Cucinotta, Centria AMK and Santeri Koivisto, XAMK.
How to reconcile the ethics and income generation of the education export value chain and regional development’s requirements for a skilled workforce?
According to the definition of the Ministry of Education and Culture, “education export can be considered any business based on education, an education system or the transfer of know-how, for which a foreign entity pays for the designed product or service”. Finland is aiming for growth and additional funding to cover the costs of higher education institutions, for example through tuition fees.
The national Talent Boost 2023–2027 program recognises the potential of international talent for Finland. It sets the goal of doubling the number of international degree students and ensuring that 75% of the students stay to work in Finland.
In Finland, education has traditionally been free of charge, and we are proud of the comprehensive opportunities for education both at the basic level and at the vocational and higher education levels. Even if it’s free, someone always pays, and in 2018 Finland introduced annual tuition fees for students outside the EU/EEA area, like many other surrounding countries. However, after the initial drop, the number of international applicants has more than doubled compared to before. Now we are in a situation where we are asking about resources and quality because the journey from applicant to actual student is really long.
Higher education institutions’ budgets are often tight, and when the opportunity to export education came into the higher education institution’s toolbox, hopes for an increase in funding were high. The export of education has also interested the media. Colourful comments about the higher education institutions overcharging the students and being involved in human trafficking, as well as wondering why anyone would come or stay here to work in general have been featured in abundance.
Therefore, at this stage, it is important to collectively look in the mirror and reflect on the value base of Finnish higher education institutions’ own activities. The relatively loose legislation regarding education export has been interpreted, even publicly, by various parties. The difficulty of interpretation and the emergence of new methods of operation and new educational products have led to situations where the ethics of the entire education export has been questioned.
Liability issues have been very difficult to figure out, and some actors have decided to stay out of the whole game. At this stage, we should definitely think about how we act in the event of a mistake or a lapse in judgment. What kind of means do we have to fix them together, and who is responsible for fixing them?
Finland is a high-trust society, and our higher education is also built on that value base. We are a unique country precisely for this reason. In global operations, however, byproducts, such as the abuse of education-based immigration and the financial benefits received by various parties, as well as the possibilities of the higher education institutions to influence these phenomena, are emphasised. We believe that Finnish higher education institutions really care about their students, and our goal is to provide high-quality education and possibly thereby create value for our operating areas. On the other hand, we also need to think about how attracting talents from other countries affects less developed societies, for example when we aim to bring nurses and doctors to Finland.
We would like to invite you to write about the phenomena of education export in our theme issue. How do you and your higher education institution act and prepare for the demands of internationality and the ethics of the value chain of education export, income generation and regional development? The key is the measures, experiences, capabilities and solutions with which you, as a higher education institution, redeem the promises you made in education export to different interest groups and how the values of the world’s happiest nation are realised in your operations.
You can choose your focus from the sub-themes below, or if we have forgotten something central, other sub-themes are also welcome:
1.LEGISLATION
- How does the legislation support ethical activities in education exports?
- What phenomenas have the current legislation created?
- What legislative development targets do we have from the point of view of ethical education export?
- How does the legislation regulate the export of education work in different countries vs. Finland.
2. OPERATING ENVIRONMENT
- The critical effects of geopolitics on the development of the internationality of higher education institutions?
- How should the higher education institution consider the geopolitical environment?
- What measures does the university use to ensure the continuity of its operations in case of geopolitical crises?
- How to take into account the global shortage of health services?
- How does education-based immigration change the aging of the population and the weakening of the dependency ratio?
3. EMPLOYMENT
- Opportunities for highly educated immigrants to find employment in Finland?
- What steps should universities and companies take to redeem their promises regarding the employment of university students?
- Do immigrants with higher education have opportunities to find employment in expert positions?
- What effective practices have been created to support employment?
- How can the public sector support the employment of skilled workers?
- What can be given to the experts in order to strengthen the competitiveness of companies?
4. MARKETING
- Competition for international talent is intensifying – could ethics be a factor in Finland’s competitiveness?
- How to ensure a sustainable relationship between image marketing and fulfilling promises?
- What kind of messages should Finland send to attract foreign students to Finland?
- How could actors together ensure ethical recruitment?
5. SERVICE STRUCTURE
- What should the services of the university and the operating environment be in order to create staying power?
- How does your university support and cooperate with operators in the surrounding area?
- How to ensure a smooth entry into the country and integration into the Finnish information society
- How can international students create networks and a life for themselves in Finland?
- Do the municipalities feel their responsibility for the integration of skilled workers?
- Student councils’ investments in the integration of university students?
- Services for students with families under review.
Abstracts of around 300 words should be sent to the editors at francesca.cucinotta@centria.fi and santeri.koivisto@xamk.fi no later than May 15, 2024. Acceptance of the abstract will be announced by 30 May 2024.
Article manuscripts with pictures must be sent to theme editors by July 31, 2024. The editors comment on the manuscript, after which the authors finalize their text. Feedback on the articles will be sent to the responsible author by August 15, 2023.
The corrected version of the article must be submitted to the theme editors by August 31, 2023.
The theme issue will be published in mid-October in week 42.
The maximum length of an expert article is 10,000 characters, a review 4,000 characters and more free-form texts about 3,000 characters (including punctuation marks). You can write in Finnish, Swedish or English.
More detailed instructions for authors can be found at https://uasjournal.fi/in-english/instructions-for-writers/. You should familiarize yourself with them carefully.
Please forward the invitation to your own organization and to your own networks.
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