MSc on Michael’s Domain

Still wondering what to study?

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is what I would do if I were 20 years old today: I would enter an interdisciplinary study program. My favorite among the programs offered in Finland is the International Master’s Programme in Pharmacy (officially “Master’s Programme in Pharmaceutical Research, Development and Safety”, abbreviated MPHARM) at the University of Helsinki. I give you 5 compelling reasons:

Brain drain from Finland continues

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Finland is educating its citizens to a very high level, but is not able to keep this highly educated work force in the country. The net balance of university degree holder migration has been negative throughout the last decade and the trend is worsening, especially at the Bachelor’s and Master’s level. At the highest level, the interpretation is not very straightforward, since this group contains Licentiate* holders, PhDs, postdocs as well as professors. However, the negative trend is also stable, but not accelerating as fast as at the lower education levels. In this group the brain drain occurs selectively to the best countries with just 5 top countries absorbing 66% of the most highly educated migrants (USA, Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany and Sweden), while the lower degree holders are not as selective (52% of MSc and 41% of BSc holders migrate to the same top countries). Unfortunately, this statistic only reports the migration of Finnish citizens. In order to get a complete picture, one would need the same data for the migration of non-Finnish citizens. For this graph, the data from Statistics Finland was used ( http://www.stat.fi/til/muutl/2016/02/muutl_2016_02_2017-12-18_tie_001_fi.html) . All countries were grouped according to better or worse scientific output than Finland in the comparison (Nature Index, Weighted fractionalcount, https://www.natureindex.com/country-outputs/generate/All/global/All/weighted_score) . Countries that performed better thanFinland in 2016 were: USA, China, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, France, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Spain, India, Italy,Australia, Netherlands, Israel, Sweden, Singapore, Russia, Taiwan, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Brazil, Poland.* Licentiate is a degree specific to Finland and a several other countries, which is somewhere between a MSc and a PhD. In Finland, it has been decreasing in importance over the years since there is no equivalent in many other countries.

TRANSMED - the most medical research education for your buck

Sat, 25 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Starting from this autumn term, even Finnish universities, so far the strongholds of free education, have started to demand study fees from students from outside the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA). Between 13k€ and 18k€ per year, the tuition fees are still modest compared to some other universities. At the moment, compared with other universities, you probably get the best returns for your money at the University of Helsinki .The TRANSMED Master’s Program is perhaps the best example. Given the real costs of a research-oriented medical MSc education in a world class environment, the 15k€ tuition fee per year is a bargain compared to similar programs at other universities. And even better: the chances to be accepted are surprisingly good. Some have proposed to increases the fees, but no concrete plans exist at the moment.So what is keeping foreign students from flocking to Finland? The cold winters cannot be blamed anymore. Thanks to global warming, most of the recent Christmases have been snow-free here in Helsinki. In fact, global warming seems to hit Finland harder than most other countries. Need more reasons to come? Have a look here: http://www.visitfinland.com/article/greatest-things-about-finland/