Indian students, when they consider studying abroad, generally consider the US, the UK, Canada or Australia. However, students have now diversified their choices and started to choose less mainstream countries. Finland has emerged out to be one of the destinations for Indian students.
Finland has the perfect image of a beautiful country perfect for taking up STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) courses. The country’s education system is industry or job-oriented. Besides that, the country’s higher education institutes have state-of-the-art infrastructure and the latest technologies.
Indian students applying for higher education in Finland were a little more than 200 in 2017. The number rose to 232 in the next year. In 2019, from January to August, Finland has received over 600 applications already. Education in Finland is highly streamlined and life is peaceful in the Scandinavian country. These are two major reasons why students opt for Finland, according to Eric af Hallstrom, In-charge, Embassy of Finland in India.
Higher Education in Finland
Finland, being a small country has such a system where the students to professor ratio is just 20:1. This allows professors to focus on every student and help them with their assignments and projects. The Finnish education system urges students and the faculties to have a friendly relationship so the students are not hesitant to approach them.
Besides this, Finland provides students with psychological counseling, something the students in the US and the UK have been demanding for a very long time. It is mandatory for the institutes to help the students with all the document verification process too.
The most popular courses taken by Indian students in Finland are mostly related to STEM. Indian students also opt for Biotechnology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) courses. Some popular institutes of higher education in Finland include Aalto University, Helsinki and Tampere University of Technology in Tampere.
As far as life outside studies is considered, Finland was voted as the world’s happiest country to live in by the World Happiness Report, 2019. Students studying in Germany face the language barrier while communicating with others. However, Helsinki, due to high globalization, almost everyone knows fluent English.
Featured image from Pixabay
