Third-country nationals in Finland earn more study credits per year and graduate faster than their Finnish counterparts, a recent VATT Institute for Economic Research report finds.
A third-country national is someone from outside the EU, who needs a residence permit to live, study, or work in Finland. Citizens of EU/EEA countries and Switzerland do not require a permit to enter Finland and are not included in the report.
According to VATT’s Data Room report, in the 2023–2024 academic year, higher education students with a study-based residence permit earned a median of about 64 credits, compared with 54 for other students.
A higher education student usually needs 60 credits per year to graduate on time, so a ten-credit difference equals about two standard five-credit courses.
The report also finds that students with study-based residence permits work less and have lower earnings compared to other students. In 2024, the average monthly income of third-country nationals was 770 euros, compared with 1,350 euros for others.
In 2024, two-thirds of students granted residence permits for higher education were citizens of South Asian countries.
Impact of tuition fees for non-EU students
According to VATT researcher Max Toikka, differences in age, gender, year of study, or degree programme do not explain the disparity in the number of credits earned.
Before the 2018–2019 academic year, the median number of credits for students with a study-based residence permit and other students was practically the same.
Students from non-EU countries who began higher education in August 2017 or later have been required to pay tuition fees, even though many have received grants from higher education institutions to cover the fees.
“Our study did not examine whether there is a causal link between tuition fees and the number of credits earned,” says VATT Senior Researcher Juho Alasalmi.
In recent years, non-EU students in Finland have been slightly more likely to enrol in polytechnic programs, though the distribution between university and polytechnic programmes remains fairly even, the report says.
Almost half of students with residence permits are enrolled in technology or ICT programs, a much higher share than among other students. However, health and welfare fields have seen substantial growth in popularity.
The number of first-time study-based residence permits for higher education has grown sharply in the 2020s. In 2024, about 8,000 were granted, up from roughly 2,000 per year in the late 2010s.
