#whatareyoudoing
Many students may know Student Union as the organization who gives the blue nice cards to students with great benefits, organizes parties, has something to do with tutors or then they are just a bunch of people sitting in front of computers while looking busy and important.
Behind the office doors is bustle going on whether the doors are open or closed. This spring will be held parliamentary election in Finland and it keeps the JAMKO board indeed busy. Finland’s students of universities (include students of universities and universities of applied sciences) have national #educationpromise –campaign going on to “guarantee the Finnish success story – don’t make cuts to education”.
Well yeah, Finnish students blah blah student allowance sooooo heard of that blah blah foreign students get nothing like that. How would this kind of #educationpromise impact on students from outside of Finland’s borders? The campaign has four keynotes: 1. Finnish student health service FSHS (currently not available for Universities of Applied Sciences) for all university students, 2. education is tuition-free, 3. funds for education will not be cut and 4. financial aid for students will not be weakened. To pick the most worrying international theme here is the tuition part. Student unions, also JAMKO, tries its hardest to get the politicians to abandon the idea of having tuition for students coming outside of EU and EEA lands. We will call to candidates of Jyväskylä and ask their opinions to the keynotes and help them to understand that Finland has a great reputation of having high quality education for free – why to lose that specialty. Personally I found it as a richness to have for example Asian and African students on my class. What if the tuition comes? Are Finnish weather and dark winter the reason to pay thousands of euros per year for?
Finnish students are living unsure times according to the student allowance from KELA (The Social Insurance Institution of Finland). Finnish parliament will vote tomorrow if a new law for limiting the student allowance for only one academic degree be implemented. This means in practice that after I have finished my nursing studies, the student allowance is not paid for me anymore if I want to add midwife studies to my expertise, although I haven’t used all my student allowance months I could have. Students all over the Finland keep their fingers crossed the law proposal does not go through. So politicians in Finland, what are you doing? #educationpromise please!
Factual greetings, Taija