Finns enter universities at relatively advanced age

17-year-old Finns' expected student years longest in OECD

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Finns start their academic studies relatively late compared with many other nations.
      Of 19-year-old Finns, only 16 percent have enrolled in a university programme, whereas the corresponding figures among the British and the Americans are 34 and 47 percent respectively.
      These are some of the findings in a newly-published broad OECD report called Education at a Glance, which compares the education systems of different countries.
      In the rest of the Nordic countries, 19 to 20-year-old university students are even more of a rarity than in Finland. One possible contributing factor for late university entry in Finland is that many boys choose to get their military service out of the way immediately after completing secondary education.
      The expected remaining schooling time for a 17-year-old Finn is the longest in all of the OECD countries; 4.3 years of either part-time or full-time studies. The OECD average is 2.7 years. These figures include specialised studies and post-graduate work.
     
Part-time studying is more common in Finland than in most other OECD countries.
      All in all, Finland compares well with the rest of the OECD nations as a country of highly educated people. The percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with either a university degree or former vocational college education is 40, which ranks among the highest in the OECD.
      This equals the national average of South Korea, Norway, and the United States.
      In Canada and Japan just over a half of the age group have completed their tertiary level education.
      In older age groups, the education level of Finns is close to the OECD average.
     
Finland spends money on education in moderation. In 2001, Finland used 5.8 percent of the GDP to school its citizens, which is slightly more than in the OECD countries on average. At the top of the list were Denmark and South Korea, with 7.1 and 8.2 percent of their respective GDPs spent on education.
      In Finland and other Nordic countries the education system is distinctly publicly funded. The share of private funding in tertiary education in Finland, Denmark, and Norway is less than four percent.
      In South Korea, by contrast, private funding covers three fourths of the higher education budget.
      In Finland the cost of education per student per year is as follows: EUR 3,600 in preschool, EUR 4,700 in the lower grades of the basic elementary school, EUR 7,400 in higher grades of the basic school, EUR 5,900 in secondary education, and EUR 10,900 in university education.
      Around EUR 3,900 of the university education budget per student goes to funding research and development activities.
      Other countries that have recognised the importance of R&D include Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, and The Netherlands.
     
Finnish universities still have very few foreign students, only 2.4 percent of the student body, whereas in countries such as Australia and Switzerland over 17 percent of the student population come from other countries.
      Around 40 percent of foreign students in Finland study natural sciences and engineering.


Links:
  OECD Education at a Glance

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