International degree students’ experiences of internship and employment in Turku, Finland

Abstrakti

The PATH Project – International talents as resource for expanding companies, funded by the European Social Fund and coordinated by Åbo Akademi University, aims to help international students in the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Turku area to act as a productive part of the local economic life after graduation. The Migration Institute of Finland conducted a survey in September 2015 for all the international degree students in Turku and a year later a follow-up survey was conducted. This article brings knowledge of the international degree students internship and work experiences during their studies, and how successful they were gaining employment after graduation in Turku. Of the international degree students of Turku who were graduating either in the end of 2015 or in 2016, 86 percent had either worked in Turku or had completed an internship in Finland or had done both. Graduate respondents who had stayed in Turku after graduation, nine out of ten were working and one was about to start to work. Most of them were Ph.D. candidates.