Author: Iida Putkonen

Student housing in Finland is mostly regulated through the Finnish Association of Student Housing Organizations, SOA ry. In almost every city with a university you can find one of its repre-
sentatives. In Oulu that would be PSOAS. They are the ones owning the properties and renting them to ‘eligible’ students.

Of course, there is always an option of finding your own place on the private market, but especially for foreigners and short-term students it is much easier to go via PSOAS. Because of this and because their places are usually affordable, furnished and close to university, it might be hard to snatch one for yourself – and if you don’t apply early enough, the long waiting lists could leave you homeless in September when school starts.

Are There Enough Rooms?

This situation might leave obvious grounds for complaining. After all, Oulu has at least one thing in excess and that is space – so why not just build more houses? Well, theoretically, that thought is valid – but in practice hardly doable. The bottle-neck seems to occur really only in the autumn, when freshmen and huge amounts of international students arrive. PSOAS receives around 2500 applications each summer, while its 5500 capacities can accommodate roughly a thousand new tenants each year.

“You never really know how many will actually arrive in the end,” explains Jari Simonen, Service Manager of PSOAS.

“Even the University can’t say for sure how many of its applicants will actually come.”

In busy years, such as 2012, this means mainly improvising: When PSOAS’ houses were full, some students ended up living in Omena Hotelli – on special, University-arranged conditions, of course.

At the moment, around a thousand international tenants are accommodated by PSOAS. Every year, a quota of 250 rooms are reserved for incoming exchange students only, and for the international Master’s and PhD students various methods have been tried out.

This fall, they will be on the very same list as the incoming Finnish students – who, luckily, do not rely on PSOAS only.

“When we offer some of the Finnish students housing in summer, they might already have found something from the free market by then,” says Simonen.

Circulating those who end up without a place has proven to not be a good idea. Common practice in bigger cities like Helsinki or Stockholm, where the housing bottle-neck is even worse and stretches over the entire market (if you plan to reproduce here, better put your newborn on one of the waiting lists right away!), has been to rotate students. They are only allowed to live in their place for a year, then they move. By knowing that playing the musical chair game does not magically create more chairs, PSOAS is one step ahead of those cities and has abolished this rule quickly again.

Shared Living = Happy Living

So when in the upcoming academic year an increased quota of 390 places for exchange students needs to be fulfilled, as also the students of the University of Applied Sciences will now be taken under PSOAS’ wing, while having a more or less stable income of freshmen, plus a small portion of University personnel living in PSOAS housing, it might become a bit tighter around the autumn again.

The approximately 50% of applicants who do not get a housing offer won’t end up on the streets. But it might be worth considering your own living situation. If you have a living room you mostly use as additional closet, why not rent it out short-term to an international visitor, for instance? Not only will it cut your costs, you might also get to know a new culture, language, and maybe even a friend. And, for sure, you will have a place to stay abroad afterwards. Win-win!

Maybe, if Finland existed in something of a vacuum, its famous economic and social system would hardly know any trouble. Nonetheless, such factors as the global economic slowdown, the lowering of electronic exports and demand for paper and electronics, the collapse of trade with Russia, and the aging of the population have driven Finnish economy into a corner, forcing a critical reassessment of Finland’s social equation.

“For decades we have shortened the time we work,” says Jyri Häkämies, leader of the Confederation of Finnish Industries EK, in his interview to Yle.

“Now we’ve changed direction.”

The direction is that according to the new government’s plan (they call it “the Social Contract”) Finns will have to work 24 hours more a year without extra pay. Besides, employees will also have to pay a greater portion of social insurance contributions. The government believes that these measures will help increase the employment rate to 72% and reduce the unemployment rate to 5% by 2019.

According to the recent OECD report, the government’s target is actually reached only around 2050. And what we will have to deal with by then is the bad treatment of workers, the shift in the balance of power in Finnish society and endangered social dialogue, as “the Social Contract” will affect negatively mainly pensioners, families with children and the unemployed, and will be favourable for the richest part of the population.

The government’s proposed austerity measures and budget cuts are highly criticized. Demonstrations and protests against them follow one after another with no serious outcomes. This is a turning point for Finland and Finnish society, especially keeping in mind all the recent policies that have been hitting hard on education and research.

The OECD devotes a full chapter on prioritizing investing for the future and maintaining strong government support for basic R&D and education. But it doesn’t look like “SSS” (the coalition government’s party leaders Juha Sipilä, Alexander Stubb and Timo Soini) having taken OECD recommendations into consideration.

So, is this all because the Finnish social model is too expensive? Does social equality come at too high a cost that sometimes we have to sacrifice it in order to survive? Or could it be that the decisions of the government are simply wrong? If you think that you might know the answer to any of these questions, feel free to drop us a line at .

Save Those Receipts

Save your receipts for an average month and put those typing fingers to good use: list all your buys in a spreadsheet and find out what are the items you are spending the most money each month on. Once you have identified them, try finding ways to shrink them next month, perhaps by changing to a cheaper brand or by using a substitute. Also, if you see that you buy a certain thing many times, you might want to consider buying a larger pack.

Be On The Lookout For Sales

No, I don’t mean that cute pair of shoes you saw last week at 100 euros and they are now 94,99. I am talking about supermarket sales of products that are about to “expire”. Most people don’t know this: Expiration dates are bogus. YES, I know, crazy right? Expiration dates are mandatory by law but they are a funny thing, what they normally mean is: “we are putting this here to cover our butts”. This doesn’t mean expiration dates are completely fake or that products don’t expire. What it means is that you don’t have to be afraid of those 50% off steaks or that 30% off milk. Most of the time you will find the discounted products to be just fine – you just save yourself a few pennies. But naturally, you shouldn’t wait for too long to consume them. Smelling them beforehand doesn’t hurt either.

Leave The Plastic At Home

We’ve all been there: you’re getting ready for a venture downtown and you swear to spend only a small amount of money. Better yet, you say you won’t spend at all. The next morning you find your wallet filled to the brim with papers like a poet’s trash bin. The expression of horror on your face does remain for the rest of the month, even if you think it doesn’t. Try getting some cash and leaving those pesky cards at home. That way you won’t be tempted to overspend. Oh, and put a few bucks aside to get home safely, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Save For A Rainy Day

Now, before you get all smug and write me an angry letter with the word “DUH” in golden letters, I do realize this is a no brainer. But bear with me (rawr). Ten euros a month becomes 120 euros at the end of the year, which might not seem like much until you find yourself needing 120 euros to pay for a new attire. All this happened because you spoiled the clothes you were going to wear to an important gala, because you were porking out on pizza 2 hours before the party and you spilled some sauce on it, then tried to wash it but the hot water shrunk it and now you look like a depressed sausage. Not that it has ever happened to me…

University Food Is Life

If all else fails, at least you have university food, which at 2.60 euros for students, is a pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

Universities are trying to adjust: they introduce joint programmes, start-up support, experimental studies, collaborations, internship grants, etc. while being pressed by the government, economy, labour market and society. It’s hard for them to go from “static” to “flexible” overnight. And as long as you happen to pursue your degree during this transitional period, you have to know what to expect after graduation. There is a big chance for you to become downshifters in the rat race.

“If young people look at their job prospects in the next four decades, I wouldn’t be surprised if they opted to vote for basic income instead”, says sociologist and working life researcher Antti Kasvio in his interview to Yle News.

He calls the “full employment” society model “nothing but a pipe dream”. For several years, the jobless rate among highly educated people has been rising faster than that of the population at large.
The Ministry of Employment and Economy’s most recent work barometer says that such professions as secretaries, journalists and advertising specialists suffer from oversupply with few prospects for employment. Biologists, chemists and biochemists are having hard times too, according to economist Heikki Taulu from Akava. This year has seen more unemployed university grads than ever before. With no salaried jobs to be found the boldest ones choose to try their luck as entrepreneurs.

Probably, international students feel the pressure of the rough times the most. Just under half of them are employed in Finland within a year of graduation. The other half leave with their degrees or remain unemployed. After receiving a Master’s degree, many of them get jobs in the hospitality and cleaning industries. Unfortunately, Finnish companies in other areas have no strategy for employing international graduates.

“If a student with a lower degree doesn’t get a job they often pursue PhD studies because that guarantees them 4 years of work through to their dissertation”, says Maija Arvonen, Agreements and Bargaining Officer with the Finnish Union of Experts in Science.

But once they graduate they face the same problem again – the private sector is not interested in hiring those with PhDs. The circle has been closed. By getting a university degree you might set yourself up for downshifting in the rat race triggered by recession, political and social changes.  What you can do now to brake a fall is to be aware of the risks, get your teeth into all opportunities available and keep calm.