At the end of the year, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment published a report on the regulatory vulnerabilities related to work-based and education-based residence permits. Inspired by this report, Orpo’s government decided to draw up measures to address the income-related challenges of international students and their families. However, there is a key problem with the report: the measures target the wrong things and are insufficient or, rather, would worsen the situation of international students.
The government has decided to make family reunification more difficult for students by requiring that a student’s family can only move to Finland one year after the student has arrived. The reasoning behind the decision is that it would allow students to form a more realistic view of how to support a family in Finland. While this reasoning is not without logic, the policy ignores the negative effects that hindering family reunification may have.
Separation from one’s family has a negative effect on social integration and language learning and increases the risk of developing mental health symptoms. Family members of students from outside the EU and EEA countries move to Finland more often, and these students are also more likely to find employment in Finland than students coming from EU and ETA countries. Therefore, it can be concluded that a student’s family relocating to Finland is an indication that they aim to build a long-term future here. With their policy, the government is signalling that the families of students are no longer welcome in Finland.
The report highlights the role of foreign educational agents in spreading misleading advertising and contributing to the indebtedness of international students, as agents may charge up to tens of thousands of euros for their services. Misleading advertising and the resulting financial difficulties are genuine issues in Finland. It is therefore positive that the government has decided to investigate ways to prohibit the use of agents who are not in a contractual relationship with higher education institutions. Compiling information on agents used by higher education institutions and preparing rules for student recruitment are also steps in the right direction.
While investigating the prohibition of the use of agents is a good sign, achieving this goal will be very difficult, as so-called wild agents operate outside Finnish and EU legislation. This is also acknowledged in the report. In many countries, paying an agent to help get a study place is not illegal. The work of agents used by higher education institutions definitely requires rules, because, as MOT revealed (link), there are also huge shortcomings in how agents in contractual relationships operate.
However, the income difficulties experienced by international students are most strongly linked to Finland’s own actions, because Orpo’s government decided to worsen the indebtedness of international students by charging tuition fees at full cost for non-EU and non-EEA students from 1 August 2026 onwards. At worst, this change will increase the indebtedness of foreign students by tens of thousands of euros. Additionally, the reintroduction of application fees during the current government term has further exacerbated the financial burden on international students. In light of this, the concerns raised by the government regarding the indebtedness of international students seem hypocritical.
If Orpo’s government has a genuine interest in addressing the income-related challenges of international students, it should critically assess tuition fees as well as the impact that charging fees at full cost has on the livelihood of international students. Also, while the national grant system that was already promised in the Government Programme is still needed, no funding has been granted for its establishment. It is also time to figure out how international students could be included in a system that secures their livelihood and provides financial incentives for them to complete their degrees and remain in Finland. This government still has time to make more ambitious decisions to help international students, but the clock is ticking.
