Hundreds of Kenyan students have been studying in Finland as part of the education export scheme, but now face the risk of deportation.
This week, All Points North peels back the many layers of a complex education export deal involving Finnish universities of applied sciences and local county authorities in Kenya.
The students came to Finland in 2022 to study as part of the deal, but have had their studies suspended over non-payment of school fees after the first semester of tuition.
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Under Finnish legislation, institutions offering 'education export' programmes cannot legally bill students directly for their training. EU students cannot be charged tuition fees at all, but those from outside Europe can be charged if they gain admission to a normal degree programme.
With education export programmes, that admission process is bypassed for a programme set up specifically for students from a particular area.
Instead of students paying the fees, another organisation is the 'commissioner' of the programme and makes those payments, but in a pastoral region in Kenya’s Rift Valley it appears the costs were passed straight on to students themselves.
Yle News spoke with Patrick Gathara of the Nairobi-based news outlet, The Elephant, about the case. Gathara said that apart from the relative poverty of the region, the plan was questionable in other ways.
"I think that even the logic of the deal itself was problematic because it’s basically Kenyan parents who are paying to finance students who would work as nurses in Finland, when we have shortages of medical personnel here," he noted.
Mortgage magic
With interest rates increasing at a rapid clip, we ask personal finance expert Michael Lutzeier what people can do as they approach their annual interest rate adjustment.
The problem could be quite substantial, according to Lutzeier, if the 12 month euribor rate is the reference rate.
"Your interest cost will rise by 4 percentage points," said Lutzeier. "And this new interest rate will then be valid for 12 months and you will pay interest according to this rate. So, that's quite a lot of money. For example, if you have a loan of 150,000 euros…you would pay 6,000 euros more interest per year, so that's 500 euros more per month."
We also get the lowdown on Jari Aarnio's latest court ruling – perhaps the final act in the long-running Aarnio saga.
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This week's show was presented by Egan Richardson and Denise Wall. The sound engineer was Anders Johansson.
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