Finland’s hard-working and confident experts abroad

Impact assessment of EDUFI trainee programmes reaffirms the results of the previous survey

An impact assessment has been made on international EDUFI trainee programmes that enable international traineeships for Finnish students in higher education and recent graduates. This report offers a review to the international traineeship programmes administered by Centre for International Mobility (CIMO) and The Finnish National Agency for Education during years 2015-2018. The assessment reproduced the previous survey on the subject: Finland’s hard-working and confident experts abroad.  

As in the previous assessment of EDUFI trainee programmes, the programmes were found to be of high quality and complementary to the existing options on offer for international traineeship possibilities. EDUFI traineeship placements’ focus outside of Europe seems to further hold relevance for the programme, because the Erasmus+ programme covers well the European traineeship mobility scheme. Also, the traineeship cooperation with particularly Finnish organisations and organisations engaged in development co-operation is seen as valuable and relevant in achieving Finland’s objectives. 

International traineeship period is experienced to enrichen studies from both students’ and higher education institutions’ perspective. Development of international professional career paths was discovered to hold a significance from both the employer’s and trainees’ perspectives. The learning experience offered by the employers and the latest competence brought to the workplace by the trainees, were seen as a mutually beneficial exchange. When executed in high-quality, EDUFI traineeship programmes are observed to accumulate value for our society at large by strengthening not only competences, but also competitiveness and international cooperation.