Students and Employers
As 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
Came from Britain to teach
in the English Department of
Oulu University in 1976. From
1985 he worked as an English
Language lecturer in the Tampere
University Language Centre.
He has recently retired.
- Painetussa lehdessä sivu 20
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