A greeting from National union of university students in Finland SYL

2015 was an eventful year for students. As we are all well aware of, the Finnish Government decided on cutbacks for several hundred million euro in education, and we are still waiting to see what the consequences will be. Year 2016 promises to be as eventful. This is the year is when what was decided last year will be implemented. In addition, there are other substantial long term development processes going on.

This year, decisions will be made on how to implement the cuts to student financial aid as well as tuition fees for students from outside the EU and EEA countries.  Policies on the development of the social and health care reform (Sote reform) will also be made and entail finding how and where to fit in student health care. The field of higher education is turned upside down as projects with the objective of joining traditional universities and universities of applied sciences or bringing them closer to each other, advance in different parts of Finland. There is an unprecedented number of immigrants who need to find a place in education and integrate.
The student movement in Finland needs to play a number of diverse roles this year. We need to both speak up for education and culture, while at the same time seeing farther into the future than anyone else. Everyone’s contribution and visions are needed this year.

The members of our Executive Committee this year are Heikki Koponen (president), Siiri Nousiainen (vice president, communications), Alviina Alametsä (international education policy, development cooperation, working life), Ella Keski-Panula (social policy: student health care, housing, municipal elections), Annu Komulainen (social policy: student finances, environment, wellbeing, equality incl. language), Tuomas Kuoppala (education policy: higher education structures, education export) and Mia Lehto (education policy: digitalisation and year-round studies, study ability and associations).