A requirement that foreign students from outside the European Union who apply to study at Finnish polytechnics need an official international certificate of language proficiency appears to have led to a sharp decline in valid applications this spring.
The number of applicants from some African countries fell to about a third from the previous year.
The schools and the National Board of Education suspect that a lack of knowledge of the requirement may have been a problem.
The TOEFL and IELTS tests required of would-be students from outside the EU and EEA countries are also expensive. There can also be a wait of several months before a student can attend such a test.
A round of calls to the larger Finnish institutions indicates that the number of suitable applicants had plummeted in nearly every school
This does not necessarily mean that the linguistic skills of the applicants would be inadequate, although in some cases it might be the case.
Some forgeries of language certificates have also been found, says Susanna Nupponen, planner for foreign language instruction at the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki.
Project chiefAnnika Grönholm at the National Board of Education says that the polytechnics have made efforts to improve the professional skills of those examining the applications, in order to better identify forged school certificates and identity documents.
In the spring, the Finnish Border Guard held courses for employees of the institutions to help recognise forged documents.
“There are some very skilfully done forgeries out there”, Grönholm says.
On TuesdayHelsingin Sanomat reported that almost no applicants had made it through the process of applying for the English language curriculum at the HAMK University of Applied Sciences in Hämeenlinna.
The school organised an additional application round, and found 130 suitable students at an entrance examination held in Ghana. However, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs suspects that there may have been some shortcomings in the student selection process.
