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Students and EmployersAs I look back over my career, I feel that one of the best times I experienced as an English language teacher in Finnish universities was during the Finnish economic collapse in the 1990s. Why? Because my students started to take their studies seriously. When I came to the Tampere University Language Centre in 1985 I found that among the business students, who were my main responsibility, the fashion was to graduate quickly. How well they did in their studies was not considered very important by most; average grades were enough. The courses were slow to begin at the start of the academic year because students often took their holidays when their summer jobs finished and they drifted back to university during September. In addition, many students were working parttime and as a result their attendance was erratic. When the depression struck, parttime work dried up and there was no longer any rush to graduate because unemployment loomed. Student motivation improved dramatically: they attended regularly and they wanted to get good grades. For example, there was a clear rise in the standard of my students’ presentations. Where earlier presentations had often been merely something that had to be got out of the way in order to complete the course, suddenly students wanted to do them well as they could. The economy recovered, parttime employment among students started to grow and inevitably class attendance became irregular again. While the great majority of my students are now present at the start of the academic year, holidays remain an issue. Some students see no problem in taking a two-week holiday in the middle of term. Of course, teachers should be strict about attendance, but we are also under pressure to get the students through. In language centres we are well aware that language studies must not create a bottleneck delaying graduation. Students can compensate for absence by doing extra tasks, but this involves extra work for teachers. Am I really obliged to spend extra time and effort on a student who considers himself to be a special case because he is studying simultaneously in two different universities and also, needless to say, working part-time? When I have grumbled to my business students about poor attendance, they tell me that they have no choice but to work as work experience is the most important factor when they apply for their first big job. Most employers are more interested in a new graduate’s work experience than in what courses she or he has taken. A recent letter in Helsingin Sanomat (1.9.) made the same point: the writer complained that employers expect a young, newly qualified job applicant to have 15 years’ work experience. The Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK) moans about how long students take to graduate in Finland but the expectations of its own members are one cause of the problem. Moreover, few employers seem to take an interest in how well students have done in their studies. My students (including my humanists) tell me that their grades will have little or no effect on their employment prospects. Amongst other things a top university is a state of mind. If there are ever going to be top universities in Finland, attitudes, including the attitudes of employers, will have to change. In a top university teachers have high expectations of their students and students are not content with average results. But if Finnish students are to get excellent results they will have to be able to focus on their studies better than is the case at present. Ben Mathias
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