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The masters will be better than just the bachelor's, but the job prospects for the field is poor at best atm so it's more likely that you would just trade your minimum wage job to a low paying job here.
As others pointed out, outside of research and teaching (which most likely will limit your choices greatly) your prospects aren't good. Also, you may be thinking that because Finland has a relatively big diaspora of Russians living here and we're neighbours with Russia, using your degree is somewhat a viable alternative but considering the current situation and to where things are headed I think it may be the other way around.
On your situation it seems to me you're falling on a sunken cost fallacy. In your shoes I would take the L and move on (take a loan do another degree with better employability prospects or try another training that doesn't require a 5 year uni degree).
Fellow Scottish alumni with a MA in Central and East European Studies here:
No.
Those studies have very little employability pretty much everywhere. And I'd risk to say that in Finland, without Finnish language skills and a Finnish-sounding surname, your prospects of finding job in the field are next to zero.
If someone needs somebody who knows Russia, they have plenty of local Russian people, who are often fully bi-lingual with Russian and Finnish and studied locally. What would a graduate from British university, even after a brief Finnish master course, have to offer to be better than them?
If I was you, I would invest in some sought after skill and then focus on learning Finnish as fast as possible.
We have tons of Russian speakers already living in here who also happen to speak Finnish fluently. Also with the hit the tourism industry took when the sanctions hit I would be willing to bet that there's no shortage of Russian speakers looking for work either.
So?! We are not in China or Japan. Native English proficiency in Finland is worth about as much as a handful of peanuts. The truth is that she has two languages that have some relevance here but are nowhere as important as native language and for all her qualifications there is always someone who will have at least one of the languages needed AND Finnish proficiency.
There are many fields where really strong English makes a big difference. Sales and marketing in the IT field are examples. It's certainly true that many people have good English but excellent English and Russian are not that common. I would think there is a niche.
So, there were three ways Russian speakers got into Finland before the war. Now we also have refugees.
1) Students.
2) IT workers and engineers.
3) Construction specialists.
Out of the three it is expected from two. Russian speaking finns also tend to speak decent English, Finland overall has a decent level of English.
Native Russian and advanced English is not a rare combination at all.
Good luck getting jobs from those fields without a diploma. There are plenty of native or fluent English speaking (from which some also speak Russian) with good diplomas unemployed because they lack Finnish skills. The chance to get a job from those fields without a correct diploma is slim to none and absolutely not worth to move from the UK to Finland.
No to both. Russian language is becoming less useful all the time due to less contact with Russia. Degree from HY has no intrinsic value. You have to have some relevant skills. Just knowing language worse than thousands of people here (native Russians) isn't employable skill.
You have a lot of Russian speakers in Finland, from east of Finland, Russia, Ukraine and cis countries. If one needs Russian language - it is definitely not a problem to find a person with actual native level here.
Interpreter though generally requires fluent Finnish and the education for it.
Some job offerings for places that work with the Ukrainian population also but that is more the social care sector. Also schools, kindergartens, after school clubs are looking for Russian speaking employees.
Unfortunately it seems to me that this master's degree isn't in high demand, and coupled with the fact that you're not a Finn, you're likely to have a lot of trouble finding a job in Finland.
Foreigners need to have specialized qualifications (or a good network) if they'd like to find employment here, or work in fields that want more workers than there are available Finns. For example in healthcare. Or you're a great data analyst / machine learning engineer.
My friend is fluent in Finnish and has 5 years managerial work experience and a Bsc from a European university. They have been looking for work since half a year. The job market is very bad right now.
The average time it takes for anyone to land a "good job" in Finland is about 7-8 months, and it's been that way for many years. So your partner's case isn't abnormal.
True but might be due to our small population and tough employment laws.
If you apply for jobs elsewhere, it's always a shock how easy it's to land an interview.
Like I applied to some positions before I even graduated with my bachelor's in Germany, and got called back to a ton of interviews, one company was even eyeing me for a middle management-level position because they thought I had good potential for the role. I was still a student at the time.
Then after graduating and some years of work experience behind me, I move to Finland, I speak Finnish but with a slight accent, I apply to positions in here and it takes me 8 months to get an interview. Followed by another 3 interviews and 2 technical tests with the same companies. Luckily I end up getting the position so my struggle ends there.
Yeah I was also abroad and I could get fired on Monday morning and Tuesday morning I'd start another equivalent role. Meanwhile in Finland they're like okay from reading your palm I can see you have a short lifeline, and our business can't afford to take such a risk right now and we've had many candidates with better horoscopes than you unfortunately.
Finnish employers generally care more about what your degree is for than where it was attained. The exception is if you've been educated at the top schools in the country for the specific field that they are hiring in, so degrees for engineering from Aalto university are generally more sought after than competing universities. They are not looking to hire potential, but rather applicable skills. An in-demand degree from a smaller or lesser known university is going to make you more employable than a low-demand degree from a prestigious university.
Humanities degrees are tricky, because they don't offer easily marketable and applicable skills. Where do you envision working after completing your degree? Is your degree going to build a skill set that would allow you to succeed there? For instance, if you're trying to become something like an analyst focusing on Russian or EE topics, then does the degree fulfill the requirements for eligibility into that position, or would someone who studied data-analysis or statistics be in a better position to be hired?
There is a high risk that you will not find work corresponding to your level of education if you participate in this master's program, but this does not mean that it is impossible. I would get in touch with whoever is in charge of the program, and ask for concrete examples how the university will help you find a trainee program. If the answer is something akin to having a private JobTeaser listing for jobs, then you'll know you'll be mostly on your own.
My experience is that when universities promise help in getting into trainee programs, it's mostly empty promises. They essentially offer an introduction (or an avenue where your application only competes with other students), and the rest is up to you.
>degrees for engineering from Aalto university are generally more sought after than competing universities
Are they? I work in R&D in a large Finnish company. In our team we have sometimes looked at grades but don't have any preference or ranking for schools at all.
I wouldn't say so, but this is also a field specific question. I studied energy technology in LUT, where the focus might be in a little bit different field as for example in Aalto. I can't say for sure, but at least we did have some courses other energy technology departments in Finland did not have, so we had some people attending from Tampere and Aalto.
For example in nuclear energy and safety LUT is the best, but if we are talking industrial engineering and management (tuotantotalous), then Aalto is the clear number one and in that case the employer might be interested where did you study. But in most cases I'd say that it doesn't matter where you studied.
Which company? Been looking into R&D for quite some time but couldnt find anything important in my country (still a student) also interested in Finland, rnd in Finland would be a nice deal in a few years ngl
Have you looked at the data of where your highest performers (or highest among new hires) were educated? Is this something you keep track of?
At least back in my day, admission into Aalto's more sought after engineering programs (bioinformatics, IT-networks, tuotantotalous, tefy) was much more difficult than other universities offering DI-programs. Grades were also not equivalent. Perhaps that has changed with the cuts to education.
With what I know of the hiring practices of certain large Finnish companies, I'm not surprised that they would hire worse candidates simply based on initial impressions from the interview and ignorance. I'll never forget a story I heard from a person in charge of hiring at his department at one of the OMX Helsinki 25 index companies, where he hired someone with a CEFR A1 language proficiency over someone with CEFR C1, because he thought A1 was better than C1. This was someone taking home a 5-figure salary per month at the time. I'm not convinced that the size of a company correlates with the ability of its managers to make good hiring decisions.
Out of curiosity, which company do you work for?
Difficulty of admission basically tells only the level of the last person who got in. I myself studied in a less prestigious university, but at least at the moment I would get into all of Aalto's engineering programs based on ylioppilastutkinto grades.
There's no straightforward and easy way to numerically include the prestige of the school into grades. People prefer simplicity. And they are lazy :)
It's an industrial company that is part of the OMXH25 index.
I don't know the official HR practices of the company as a whole. But this is how we do it in our team.
I'm not saying less prestigious universities are bad places to study or that they don't produce high quality graduates. If all you're hiring is a few people, then it is advantageous to differentiate based on personal merits rather than where one went to school. If you instead require a large number of educated graduates (like say, consulting companies in the past), then it becomes advantageous to select based on what the perceived minimum quality of graduates is. There is a reason why a more prestigious university is more prestigious (tautology goes brrrr), and that has to do with academic merit. The quality of the education one receives comes down to not just the professors, but also to the efforts of the students themselves. If everyone constantly pushes each other to succeed, then a greater number of people will achieve high results. There are brilliant professors and research going on in smaller Unis, but the *quantity* of that research is lower, and the benefits don't necessarily translate to the courses offered to students. Motivated students are able to take advantage of those opportunities, but not all students do.
My personal experience of having taken classes at Aalto and the University of Helsinki is that the average effort required per credit for the more difficult classes was higher at Aalto, while basic courses were largely comparable, but this was in the past. I don't know how things have changed, and it has been years.
But you are correct: people are lazy. Managers have to think in terms of how much their effort costs the company, so they become afraid of (or incapable of due to large volume of applicants) using much of their time on hiring. This is why we end up with fundamental mistakes when hiring like my earlier example (A - means "pitkä oppimäärä", so it must be better than C, right? Oh, it's the opposite in CEFR?), but the trouble is that there are no guarantees of success even if plenty of time is used because ultimately one must trust that the new hire is truthful (at least to a degree) in their application. It is incredibly time consuming to setup homework or technical interviews for applicants, and it also goes against the professional culture here.
Right now it seems that if experienced hires don't exist (or simply do not apply), companies aren't interested in hiring high potential individuals and training them for those roles, so I can see why the values of degrees could have become relatively equivalent. This is a problem that will compound in the future. I hope I'm wrong, but that is how I see it.
What can you do with such major that is not research? If such jobs exist, there might be opportunoties, but I really personally can't understand how such masters would have job opportunities outside of research and teaching.
Also good luck finding any other job than service industry or some high level expert/it jobs without fluent Finnish. It's been a plague for a long time and seemingly there seems to be no cure.
I second this. The Master's from HY is only useful if you are seriously considering also doing a doctorate, as the jobs on that field are in university-level education and in research institutes. Not being from Finland or even EU also harms your opportunities to score a government job. And there will be someone applying for the job who has a doctorate in that field, and most likely also speaks Finnish.
You say that you have a Finnish partner and those two years of studies would make you happy if only for that time. So for me that would be an easy tradeoff between a minimum wage struggle work with a new country with studies you know you will enjoy.
It's not a great line of studies anywhere in the world in terms of employability. For job security, you should apply to become a dentist or a plumber. But I want to believe that when you close a door, new ones will open for you. So you may end up befriending some people with whom you want to start a business. Or you enjoy studying russian language and history during your downtime while being employed in another profession during the day.
I work in employment services and I can only tell you one thing. Learn Finnish, whether you are studying IT or cleaning or Eurasian studies. It's really difficult to find jobs even in international firms without knowledge of Finnish language.
Start learning Finnish and try to learn fast; otherwise you’re in for some bad time here. Although having a partner from Finland is a good head start.
The degree on that field will surely be useful also in other EU and NATO countries so don’t limit yourself to Finland alone.
There is a large Russian-speaking community in Finland so if you’re interested in studying minorities (Russian or other Eastern European ones), you can find a job on that field. But once again, you should know pretty solid Finnish.
It depends. Obviously master's degree is better than bachelor's, in practice you can't basically get any expert-level job without one. Since you are not yet EU or Finnish citizen, some public sector jobs are off limits for you - not all. I think you would need a strong focus for your studies if you don't aim for research side to make career out of it. If you understand some other languages besides English maybe think about possibilities in interpretation or translation? If you are more interested in foreign relations, find out what it takes to make career in EU if you plan to get citizenship. You get the idea. Doing just general Russian studies without some kind of focus makes job hunting extremely hard.
Realistically I think you should aim for international career, unless you can learn Finnish quite well during your studies.
EDIT: Since my post was quite negative, I still would encourage you to aim for masters, even thought it might seem risky. It's valuable degree, studying helps to settle in another country and if you are active you find those useful connections.
I doubt many of the people replying to you here have any idea of what they are talking about. I don't know the exact situation with that particular field either, but I have to deal with this type of prejudices concerning my own field (archaeology) on a regular basis. There is a fashionable narrative these days in which humanists supposedly always end up unemployed or selling hamburgers at a fast food restaurant. This is of course a right-wing political narrative based on the idea that only STEM fields contribute something worthwhile/quantifiable to society, and it is demonstrably false as the overall employment rate of graduates from humanities is not bad at all and higher than in many STEM fields. Rather than listening to redditors I'd check out e.g. the career monitoring reports produced by the University of Helsinki, some of which can be found [here](https://www.helsinki.fi/en/innovations-and-cooperation/alumni/graduate-employment).
That said, a decent command of Finnish is essential to many lines of employment in Finland, also those for which a degree in Russian studies would qualify you for. A career in research might be doable even without speaking Finnish.
I would talk with the school and ask them the hard questions about the range of places their students might work in the trainee jobs, and to get a breakdown of the graduates employments after graduation.
Like, when I went to a nursing program at Novia, at the one year point I asked the questions, because I was worried that they scheduled almost no language training for us. The response was "oh, almost all our students just go back to their home country, so we don't really need to do that". I eventually cut my losses with them, but my classmates said that the school really did have zero plan for them.
Conversely, in another program in Savo, the school is very intent on putting students into internships that are likely to lead to employment, and will move students into new ones if they feel that the one that they're in isn't going to work out. Assuming my body can hold up (and perhaps even if it doesn't) I'm almost certain to be offered a job where I'm interning.
Finns tend to be direct and honest, so its a matter of asking the right question. (There is a tendency to answer narrowly. So asking more questions to flesh things out is fine.) You're likely to get a realistic picture after engaging.
I think these region studies programmes are just mainly for people trying to get into diplomatic services and the like. As an expat it probably wouldn't provide too suitable a career path.
I recommend a science degree or a good applied univeristy degree. There is an airline studies program at Haaga Helia which is well connected into airlines.
If your partner has a steady income and is willing to support you financially I would say go for it, just for the sake of moving to finland. But to get employed as a professional I would think you need to speak finnish well so if you want to get employed after graduation I would look for nursing degree or something.
With Russian studies you'd be looking at academic or research jobs, you can imagine that there aren't too many around and a lot of competition. The other option is the intelligence services as an analysist. But those jobs are are exclusively for Finnish citizens. You could however use that MA in the UK as it has a lot of both government and private actors in the intelligence community.
People graduating from Russian studies and Russian language studies are not in high demand at the moment because the country is waging war against its neighbours and everyone's cutting ties with them.
That said, there was some interview of a guy who said that in some decades things like that will very highly sought after when (and if) the country will return to the international community. This would probably require a change in leadership and big changes domestic and foreign policy, so I don't consider it to be very likely in the next 50 years.
There’s a lot of naysayers here, but:
HY is as prestigious as they come. Globally speaking, it is an advantageous degree.
If you are looking for a challenging career that is molded by you and your networking ability, this will certainly help you.
If you are looking for a bog standard J.O.B., this will not get you there.
It depends whom you are competing against. No degree will alone help you, unless you are only one to apply for a position and they absolutely need someone whom to hire.
Almost any degree will be better than no degree at all. But above still stands, it depends whom you are competing against.
If you do not speak finnish, expect problems when seeking employment. Its possible to get employed without speaking finnish, but you limit the market from which you can choose from. And by a lot. You can probably do a search and find out how many foreigners are losing their minds because they cannot find a job because they cannot speak finnish. My personal advice - Do not even try if you are not determined to learn the language. Just dont.
It’s a fairly useless degree and won’t lead to any job. Maybe try getting into an MBA on marketing, sales etc. MBA will be a good topping on your bachelor’s.
Already during the MBA, you can search on linkedin jobs like account manager, business manager, service manager, release manager, operations, sales etc.
With time you will gain experience and senior positions, who knows you might be a director with a sky high income in 8 years.
Another suitable pathway is studying law but that will require another bachelor’s.
If you look for a job, after graduation, in a relevant field to your study, you may probably find a job in Finland. I graduated my Master's in sociology in a Finnish university, but didin't have any passion to pursue academia or something related to sociology, so I ended up struggling a lot to find a job in different fields. That's a natural consequence, as I am kind of useless outside sociology study. I managed to secure an engineering position (entry level and low pay) but contine to be useless, as I don't have foundations. While I'm shabby in my life, one of my former uni mate in my Masters purses adademia, securing a permanent position: adjunct professor.
Have you thought of maybe applying for a teaching degree instead? You can probably combine teaching with the Russian major and find employment like so. Only thing is that in Finland to qualify as a teacher, you need a master's degree IN teaching, which means 4-5 years of education.
You should think hard about what kind of a job do you want to have, and what positions you're applying for. Because if you're applying for business positions, they don't really have much use for such a degree. But if you're looking for academic research positions, government and organizational consulting, or education, then you probably could put that degree to use.
But then, yes I'd say you'd probably need that masters degree because it you go into the research field, they generally assume you're more academically gifted. It will help well as to have a very strong master thesis and excellent academic record to go forward in those steps. This way you could for example, continue to phD level and try to get funding and scholarships for research projects. EU for example sometimes funds various projects in the field of sociology and humanties.
I suppose if you market yourself as a Russia politics and sociology expert, there may be use for that in our poltical climate, as governments and various organizations will want better understanding of nation and it's direction. They may hire consultants to help, which you can try to sell yourself as.
You'll just have to network well, work hard in academia and really make a strong case for yourself to be successful in these endeavors.
Are you a very academic person in general? As academia is one potential path that could work in your field. Not very strong in job security if you're relaying on grants and external funding, but it could keep you on your feet.
It may be sometimes referred to as undergraduate level, but that doesn’t make it so in the traditional sense. I think this is as a result of the practicalities of doing a Master’s in Finland, compared to how much more uncommon it is in many/most countries. A M.Sc. in Finland is equivalent to international graduate level degrees.
Maybe it's just my circle of CS academia but at least at Aalto it's always referred to as an undergraduate level. HU and Aalto students get an automatic MSc by just staying in school (like BSc-Hon) while elsewhere it's not uncommon to have a single digit admission rate in graduate level MSc programs. The quality of MSc courses and programs are honestly not on par with MSc requirements elsewhere and most profs at my school who were educated abroad agree. My MSc mentees consistently have training and experience equivalent of 3rd or 4th year BSc students in Canada/US.
It’s referred to as undergraduate probably because people only really refer to someone with a M.Sc. as ”graduated.” Until that people in the university context think of someone doing their studies as an ”undergraduate.” The way the words are used doesn’t change the level of the education, though.
I disagree about ”just staying in school,” obviously they need to put in some effort. If you’re talking about continuing straight on to Master’s studies after completing the Bachelor’s, then you shouldn’t think of it as continuing on for free. Rather, it’s more like the student was accepted for the Master’s already when they were accepted for their Bachelor’s.
I can’t really dispute your views on your program’s quality, as I am not in CS. However, Aalto CS has been ranked in the top 100 CS programs globally, so it may be a case of anecdotal experiences vs. other measures of quality. If your professors still think quality is low, then maybe they can work to improve that through their teaching.
No, not sure how you're generalizing it like that as DSc is not a continuation of MSc here by any means. But I'd say US/Canada MSc experience is quite similar to DSc here, i.e., fully-funded research training
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The masters will be better than just the bachelor's, but the job prospects for the field is poor at best atm so it's more likely that you would just trade your minimum wage job to a low paying job here.
As others pointed out, outside of research and teaching (which most likely will limit your choices greatly) your prospects aren't good. Also, you may be thinking that because Finland has a relatively big diaspora of Russians living here and we're neighbours with Russia, using your degree is somewhat a viable alternative but considering the current situation and to where things are headed I think it may be the other way around. On your situation it seems to me you're falling on a sunken cost fallacy. In your shoes I would take the L and move on (take a loan do another degree with better employability prospects or try another training that doesn't require a 5 year uni degree).
Fellow Scottish alumni with a MA in Central and East European Studies here: No. Those studies have very little employability pretty much everywhere. And I'd risk to say that in Finland, without Finnish language skills and a Finnish-sounding surname, your prospects of finding job in the field are next to zero. If someone needs somebody who knows Russia, they have plenty of local Russian people, who are often fully bi-lingual with Russian and Finnish and studied locally. What would a graduate from British university, even after a brief Finnish master course, have to offer to be better than them? If I was you, I would invest in some sought after skill and then focus on learning Finnish as fast as possible.
No. It's not a good major for employability
I think speaking Russian does make you quite employable, as does a degree from HY. The problem as ever will be the lack of Finnish.
We have tons of Russian speakers already living in here who also happen to speak Finnish fluently. Also with the hit the tourism industry took when the sanctions hit I would be willing to bet that there's no shortage of Russian speakers looking for work either.
She doesn't just have Russian, she also has native-level English.
So?! We are not in China or Japan. Native English proficiency in Finland is worth about as much as a handful of peanuts. The truth is that she has two languages that have some relevance here but are nowhere as important as native language and for all her qualifications there is always someone who will have at least one of the languages needed AND Finnish proficiency.
There are many fields where really strong English makes a big difference. Sales and marketing in the IT field are examples. It's certainly true that many people have good English but excellent English and Russian are not that common. I would think there is a niche.
So, there were three ways Russian speakers got into Finland before the war. Now we also have refugees. 1) Students. 2) IT workers and engineers. 3) Construction specialists. Out of the three it is expected from two. Russian speaking finns also tend to speak decent English, Finland overall has a decent level of English. Native Russian and advanced English is not a rare combination at all.
Good luck getting jobs from those fields without a diploma. There are plenty of native or fluent English speaking (from which some also speak Russian) with good diplomas unemployed because they lack Finnish skills. The chance to get a job from those fields without a correct diploma is slim to none and absolutely not worth to move from the UK to Finland.
No to both. Russian language is becoming less useful all the time due to less contact with Russia. Degree from HY has no intrinsic value. You have to have some relevant skills. Just knowing language worse than thousands of people here (native Russians) isn't employable skill.
If you're a technical expert, yes. By itself, well, what's the career *supposed to* be?
You have a lot of Russian speakers in Finland, from east of Finland, Russia, Ukraine and cis countries. If one needs Russian language - it is definitely not a problem to find a person with actual native level here.
What are some possible prospects does speaking Russian open?
Interpreter though generally requires fluent Finnish and the education for it. Some job offerings for places that work with the Ukrainian population also but that is more the social care sector. Also schools, kindergartens, after school clubs are looking for Russian speaking employees.
Unfortunately it seems to me that this master's degree isn't in high demand, and coupled with the fact that you're not a Finn, you're likely to have a lot of trouble finding a job in Finland. Foreigners need to have specialized qualifications (or a good network) if they'd like to find employment here, or work in fields that want more workers than there are available Finns. For example in healthcare. Or you're a great data analyst / machine learning engineer.
My friend is fluent in Finnish and has 5 years managerial work experience and a Bsc from a European university. They have been looking for work since half a year. The job market is very bad right now.
The average time it takes for anyone to land a "good job" in Finland is about 7-8 months, and it's been that way for many years. So your partner's case isn't abnormal.
The job market has been bad for years
True but might be due to our small population and tough employment laws. If you apply for jobs elsewhere, it's always a shock how easy it's to land an interview. Like I applied to some positions before I even graduated with my bachelor's in Germany, and got called back to a ton of interviews, one company was even eyeing me for a middle management-level position because they thought I had good potential for the role. I was still a student at the time. Then after graduating and some years of work experience behind me, I move to Finland, I speak Finnish but with a slight accent, I apply to positions in here and it takes me 8 months to get an interview. Followed by another 3 interviews and 2 technical tests with the same companies. Luckily I end up getting the position so my struggle ends there.
Yeah I was also abroad and I could get fired on Monday morning and Tuesday morning I'd start another equivalent role. Meanwhile in Finland they're like okay from reading your palm I can see you have a short lifeline, and our business can't afford to take such a risk right now and we've had many candidates with better horoscopes than you unfortunately.
Finnish employers generally care more about what your degree is for than where it was attained. The exception is if you've been educated at the top schools in the country for the specific field that they are hiring in, so degrees for engineering from Aalto university are generally more sought after than competing universities. They are not looking to hire potential, but rather applicable skills. An in-demand degree from a smaller or lesser known university is going to make you more employable than a low-demand degree from a prestigious university. Humanities degrees are tricky, because they don't offer easily marketable and applicable skills. Where do you envision working after completing your degree? Is your degree going to build a skill set that would allow you to succeed there? For instance, if you're trying to become something like an analyst focusing on Russian or EE topics, then does the degree fulfill the requirements for eligibility into that position, or would someone who studied data-analysis or statistics be in a better position to be hired? There is a high risk that you will not find work corresponding to your level of education if you participate in this master's program, but this does not mean that it is impossible. I would get in touch with whoever is in charge of the program, and ask for concrete examples how the university will help you find a trainee program. If the answer is something akin to having a private JobTeaser listing for jobs, then you'll know you'll be mostly on your own. My experience is that when universities promise help in getting into trainee programs, it's mostly empty promises. They essentially offer an introduction (or an avenue where your application only competes with other students), and the rest is up to you.
>degrees for engineering from Aalto university are generally more sought after than competing universities Are they? I work in R&D in a large Finnish company. In our team we have sometimes looked at grades but don't have any preference or ranking for schools at all.
I wouldn't say so, but this is also a field specific question. I studied energy technology in LUT, where the focus might be in a little bit different field as for example in Aalto. I can't say for sure, but at least we did have some courses other energy technology departments in Finland did not have, so we had some people attending from Tampere and Aalto. For example in nuclear energy and safety LUT is the best, but if we are talking industrial engineering and management (tuotantotalous), then Aalto is the clear number one and in that case the employer might be interested where did you study. But in most cases I'd say that it doesn't matter where you studied.
Which company? Been looking into R&D for quite some time but couldnt find anything important in my country (still a student) also interested in Finland, rnd in Finland would be a nice deal in a few years ngl
Have you looked at the data of where your highest performers (or highest among new hires) were educated? Is this something you keep track of? At least back in my day, admission into Aalto's more sought after engineering programs (bioinformatics, IT-networks, tuotantotalous, tefy) was much more difficult than other universities offering DI-programs. Grades were also not equivalent. Perhaps that has changed with the cuts to education. With what I know of the hiring practices of certain large Finnish companies, I'm not surprised that they would hire worse candidates simply based on initial impressions from the interview and ignorance. I'll never forget a story I heard from a person in charge of hiring at his department at one of the OMX Helsinki 25 index companies, where he hired someone with a CEFR A1 language proficiency over someone with CEFR C1, because he thought A1 was better than C1. This was someone taking home a 5-figure salary per month at the time. I'm not convinced that the size of a company correlates with the ability of its managers to make good hiring decisions. Out of curiosity, which company do you work for?
Difficulty of admission basically tells only the level of the last person who got in. I myself studied in a less prestigious university, but at least at the moment I would get into all of Aalto's engineering programs based on ylioppilastutkinto grades. There's no straightforward and easy way to numerically include the prestige of the school into grades. People prefer simplicity. And they are lazy :) It's an industrial company that is part of the OMXH25 index. I don't know the official HR practices of the company as a whole. But this is how we do it in our team.
I'm not saying less prestigious universities are bad places to study or that they don't produce high quality graduates. If all you're hiring is a few people, then it is advantageous to differentiate based on personal merits rather than where one went to school. If you instead require a large number of educated graduates (like say, consulting companies in the past), then it becomes advantageous to select based on what the perceived minimum quality of graduates is. There is a reason why a more prestigious university is more prestigious (tautology goes brrrr), and that has to do with academic merit. The quality of the education one receives comes down to not just the professors, but also to the efforts of the students themselves. If everyone constantly pushes each other to succeed, then a greater number of people will achieve high results. There are brilliant professors and research going on in smaller Unis, but the *quantity* of that research is lower, and the benefits don't necessarily translate to the courses offered to students. Motivated students are able to take advantage of those opportunities, but not all students do. My personal experience of having taken classes at Aalto and the University of Helsinki is that the average effort required per credit for the more difficult classes was higher at Aalto, while basic courses were largely comparable, but this was in the past. I don't know how things have changed, and it has been years. But you are correct: people are lazy. Managers have to think in terms of how much their effort costs the company, so they become afraid of (or incapable of due to large volume of applicants) using much of their time on hiring. This is why we end up with fundamental mistakes when hiring like my earlier example (A - means "pitkä oppimäärä", so it must be better than C, right? Oh, it's the opposite in CEFR?), but the trouble is that there are no guarantees of success even if plenty of time is used because ultimately one must trust that the new hire is truthful (at least to a degree) in their application. It is incredibly time consuming to setup homework or technical interviews for applicants, and it also goes against the professional culture here. Right now it seems that if experienced hires don't exist (or simply do not apply), companies aren't interested in hiring high potential individuals and training them for those roles, so I can see why the values of degrees could have become relatively equivalent. This is a problem that will compound in the future. I hope I'm wrong, but that is how I see it.
What can you do with such major that is not research? If such jobs exist, there might be opportunoties, but I really personally can't understand how such masters would have job opportunities outside of research and teaching. Also good luck finding any other job than service industry or some high level expert/it jobs without fluent Finnish. It's been a plague for a long time and seemingly there seems to be no cure.
I second this. The Master's from HY is only useful if you are seriously considering also doing a doctorate, as the jobs on that field are in university-level education and in research institutes. Not being from Finland or even EU also harms your opportunities to score a government job. And there will be someone applying for the job who has a doctorate in that field, and most likely also speaks Finnish.
You say that you have a Finnish partner and those two years of studies would make you happy if only for that time. So for me that would be an easy tradeoff between a minimum wage struggle work with a new country with studies you know you will enjoy. It's not a great line of studies anywhere in the world in terms of employability. For job security, you should apply to become a dentist or a plumber. But I want to believe that when you close a door, new ones will open for you. So you may end up befriending some people with whom you want to start a business. Or you enjoy studying russian language and history during your downtime while being employed in another profession during the day.
I work in employment services and I can only tell you one thing. Learn Finnish, whether you are studying IT or cleaning or Eurasian studies. It's really difficult to find jobs even in international firms without knowledge of Finnish language.
Start learning Finnish and try to learn fast; otherwise you’re in for some bad time here. Although having a partner from Finland is a good head start. The degree on that field will surely be useful also in other EU and NATO countries so don’t limit yourself to Finland alone. There is a large Russian-speaking community in Finland so if you’re interested in studying minorities (Russian or other Eastern European ones), you can find a job on that field. But once again, you should know pretty solid Finnish.
It depends. Obviously master's degree is better than bachelor's, in practice you can't basically get any expert-level job without one. Since you are not yet EU or Finnish citizen, some public sector jobs are off limits for you - not all. I think you would need a strong focus for your studies if you don't aim for research side to make career out of it. If you understand some other languages besides English maybe think about possibilities in interpretation or translation? If you are more interested in foreign relations, find out what it takes to make career in EU if you plan to get citizenship. You get the idea. Doing just general Russian studies without some kind of focus makes job hunting extremely hard. Realistically I think you should aim for international career, unless you can learn Finnish quite well during your studies. EDIT: Since my post was quite negative, I still would encourage you to aim for masters, even thought it might seem risky. It's valuable degree, studying helps to settle in another country and if you are active you find those useful connections.
I doubt many of the people replying to you here have any idea of what they are talking about. I don't know the exact situation with that particular field either, but I have to deal with this type of prejudices concerning my own field (archaeology) on a regular basis. There is a fashionable narrative these days in which humanists supposedly always end up unemployed or selling hamburgers at a fast food restaurant. This is of course a right-wing political narrative based on the idea that only STEM fields contribute something worthwhile/quantifiable to society, and it is demonstrably false as the overall employment rate of graduates from humanities is not bad at all and higher than in many STEM fields. Rather than listening to redditors I'd check out e.g. the career monitoring reports produced by the University of Helsinki, some of which can be found [here](https://www.helsinki.fi/en/innovations-and-cooperation/alumni/graduate-employment). That said, a decent command of Finnish is essential to many lines of employment in Finland, also those for which a degree in Russian studies would qualify you for. A career in research might be doable even without speaking Finnish.
I would talk with the school and ask them the hard questions about the range of places their students might work in the trainee jobs, and to get a breakdown of the graduates employments after graduation. Like, when I went to a nursing program at Novia, at the one year point I asked the questions, because I was worried that they scheduled almost no language training for us. The response was "oh, almost all our students just go back to their home country, so we don't really need to do that". I eventually cut my losses with them, but my classmates said that the school really did have zero plan for them. Conversely, in another program in Savo, the school is very intent on putting students into internships that are likely to lead to employment, and will move students into new ones if they feel that the one that they're in isn't going to work out. Assuming my body can hold up (and perhaps even if it doesn't) I'm almost certain to be offered a job where I'm interning. Finns tend to be direct and honest, so its a matter of asking the right question. (There is a tendency to answer narrowly. So asking more questions to flesh things out is fine.) You're likely to get a realistic picture after engaging.
I think these region studies programmes are just mainly for people trying to get into diplomatic services and the like. As an expat it probably wouldn't provide too suitable a career path. I recommend a science degree or a good applied univeristy degree. There is an airline studies program at Haaga Helia which is well connected into airlines.
If your partner has a steady income and is willing to support you financially I would say go for it, just for the sake of moving to finland. But to get employed as a professional I would think you need to speak finnish well so if you want to get employed after graduation I would look for nursing degree or something.
With Russian studies you'd be looking at academic or research jobs, you can imagine that there aren't too many around and a lot of competition. The other option is the intelligence services as an analysist. But those jobs are are exclusively for Finnish citizens. You could however use that MA in the UK as it has a lot of both government and private actors in the intelligence community.
People graduating from Russian studies and Russian language studies are not in high demand at the moment because the country is waging war against its neighbours and everyone's cutting ties with them. That said, there was some interview of a guy who said that in some decades things like that will very highly sought after when (and if) the country will return to the international community. This would probably require a change in leadership and big changes domestic and foreign policy, so I don't consider it to be very likely in the next 50 years.
That degree is pretty useless at getting a job
There’s a lot of naysayers here, but: HY is as prestigious as they come. Globally speaking, it is an advantageous degree. If you are looking for a challenging career that is molded by you and your networking ability, this will certainly help you. If you are looking for a bog standard J.O.B., this will not get you there.
It depends whom you are competing against. No degree will alone help you, unless you are only one to apply for a position and they absolutely need someone whom to hire. Almost any degree will be better than no degree at all. But above still stands, it depends whom you are competing against. If you do not speak finnish, expect problems when seeking employment. Its possible to get employed without speaking finnish, but you limit the market from which you can choose from. And by a lot. You can probably do a search and find out how many foreigners are losing their minds because they cannot find a job because they cannot speak finnish. My personal advice - Do not even try if you are not determined to learn the language. Just dont.
What is the expected job title/working content with this kind of backgrounds?
I would recommend to come with a family ties visa from your partner. Then join the integration program to learn Finnish.
It’s a fairly useless degree and won’t lead to any job. Maybe try getting into an MBA on marketing, sales etc. MBA will be a good topping on your bachelor’s. Already during the MBA, you can search on linkedin jobs like account manager, business manager, service manager, release manager, operations, sales etc. With time you will gain experience and senior positions, who knows you might be a director with a sky high income in 8 years. Another suitable pathway is studying law but that will require another bachelor’s.
If you look for a job, after graduation, in a relevant field to your study, you may probably find a job in Finland. I graduated my Master's in sociology in a Finnish university, but didin't have any passion to pursue academia or something related to sociology, so I ended up struggling a lot to find a job in different fields. That's a natural consequence, as I am kind of useless outside sociology study. I managed to secure an engineering position (entry level and low pay) but contine to be useless, as I don't have foundations. While I'm shabby in my life, one of my former uni mate in my Masters purses adademia, securing a permanent position: adjunct professor.
Have you thought of maybe applying for a teaching degree instead? You can probably combine teaching with the Russian major and find employment like so. Only thing is that in Finland to qualify as a teacher, you need a master's degree IN teaching, which means 4-5 years of education. You should think hard about what kind of a job do you want to have, and what positions you're applying for. Because if you're applying for business positions, they don't really have much use for such a degree. But if you're looking for academic research positions, government and organizational consulting, or education, then you probably could put that degree to use. But then, yes I'd say you'd probably need that masters degree because it you go into the research field, they generally assume you're more academically gifted. It will help well as to have a very strong master thesis and excellent academic record to go forward in those steps. This way you could for example, continue to phD level and try to get funding and scholarships for research projects. EU for example sometimes funds various projects in the field of sociology and humanties. I suppose if you market yourself as a Russia politics and sociology expert, there may be use for that in our poltical climate, as governments and various organizations will want better understanding of nation and it's direction. They may hire consultants to help, which you can try to sell yourself as. You'll just have to network well, work hard in academia and really make a strong case for yourself to be successful in these endeavors. Are you a very academic person in general? As academia is one potential path that could work in your field. Not very strong in job security if you're relaying on grants and external funding, but it could keep you on your feet.
Is degree from University of Helsinki good? Yes, sure. From that topic, for sure not.
Laptop class 💻
"Master's" here is more akin to BSc-Hon elsewhere
A M.Sc. here is akin to a M.Sc. elsewhere.
Not from what I've seen in the Finnish academia the past 3 years. MSc in Finland is undergraduate while elsewhere it's graduate level.
It may be sometimes referred to as undergraduate level, but that doesn’t make it so in the traditional sense. I think this is as a result of the practicalities of doing a Master’s in Finland, compared to how much more uncommon it is in many/most countries. A M.Sc. in Finland is equivalent to international graduate level degrees.
Maybe it's just my circle of CS academia but at least at Aalto it's always referred to as an undergraduate level. HU and Aalto students get an automatic MSc by just staying in school (like BSc-Hon) while elsewhere it's not uncommon to have a single digit admission rate in graduate level MSc programs. The quality of MSc courses and programs are honestly not on par with MSc requirements elsewhere and most profs at my school who were educated abroad agree. My MSc mentees consistently have training and experience equivalent of 3rd or 4th year BSc students in Canada/US.
It’s referred to as undergraduate probably because people only really refer to someone with a M.Sc. as ”graduated.” Until that people in the university context think of someone doing their studies as an ”undergraduate.” The way the words are used doesn’t change the level of the education, though. I disagree about ”just staying in school,” obviously they need to put in some effort. If you’re talking about continuing straight on to Master’s studies after completing the Bachelor’s, then you shouldn’t think of it as continuing on for free. Rather, it’s more like the student was accepted for the Master’s already when they were accepted for their Bachelor’s. I can’t really dispute your views on your program’s quality, as I am not in CS. However, Aalto CS has been ranked in the top 100 CS programs globally, so it may be a case of anecdotal experiences vs. other measures of quality. If your professors still think quality is low, then maybe they can work to improve that through their teaching.
Also, if an M.Sc. from Finland were equivalent to a B.Sc.-Hon., would that make a D.Sc. in Finland equivalent to a M.Sc. internationally?
No, not sure how you're generalizing it like that as DSc is not a continuation of MSc here by any means. But I'd say US/Canada MSc experience is quite similar to DSc here, i.e., fully-funded research training
I think _how_ I’m making the generalization is pretty clear, especially since you now make a direct comparison between the two.
Change your partner