Research project
Human capital acquisition and career paths of international degree students in Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences (PhD thesis project)
Since the late 1990s significantly more international students pursue English-taught Bachelor degrees in Finland. The vast majority of such degrees are offered by Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) which by definition provide education to satisfy local labour market demands and promote regional development. Graduate international students constitute an important labour pool for Finnish labour needs.
What career paths do these students take after graduation? What are the key factors that determine these career paths? How and what kind of competences do they acquire? These are the questions this thesis aims to answer.
The scope of the project includes international full-time English-medium Bachelor UAS students in the fields of Information Technology and Nursing in three Universities of Applied Sciences. These two specializations were chosen because they reflect different economic sectors, require different kinds of interpersonal and language competences, and they will enable comparison between North and South.
The scientific goal of the project is to study the motivations and determinants of International Student Migration in Finland in relation to the fields of study, the geographical location of the educational organization, employment possibilities and achieved competences.
Specialization
Personally, I have lived and worked as an English language teacher in three different countries including twenty years in countries such as the U.K. and Finland and in every country I worked in a different level educational institution. For the last eight years I have been working as a lecturer in the Information Technology degree programme at Turku University of Applied Sciences, therefore, I am naturally interested in the career paths of the international students.
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In Finnish 
