The purpose of this blog-article is to warmly welcome our exchange and master programs’ students. We are proud that you have chosen Finland as the destination of your foreign studies. As you might know, last year Finland celebrated her 100 years’ independence.

Various international organizations publish yearly rankings of countries on many interesting dimensions, like for example how stable or free the world’s countries are. There are about a dozen of these rankings, and therefore I cannot analyze all of them in this short writing. However, typical for almost all rankings is that the Nordic countries like Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland are among the “best” countries.

Last year, Finland was ranked the best on two very important characteristics: stability and freedom. Stability was evaluated for 178 nations, based on twelve primary social, economic and political indicators such as: economic equality, economic performance, human rights, rule of law, access to public services, prevalence of refugees, demographic pressures and brain drain. The main measures in the freedom ranking were freedom of the press and freedom on the internet. Also in this ranking Finland was number one out of the 195 countries analyzed.

So, obviously you, exchange and master program students, have made a good decision when choosing Finland. Even more important than these rankings is the quality of the education that you are expecting from us. I sincerely hope that your expectations are met. Likewise, you yourselves are an important resource for us. By this I mean not only your importance in enabling networking with students from various countries, but also, from the teacher’s point of view, your participation in discussion in classes where you share the viewpoints of your home country and apply them to the topics and questions that come up in these classes. Our school has also produced several excellent doctoral students from amongst your ranks, many of whom have already achieved their doctoral degree in our programs.

Looking forward to meeting you personally.

 

Esa Stenberg

Professor of International Business