Why choosing Finland ?

Many critical arguments obviously brought me to choose Finland as the place to pursue my education career:

Because I grew up in a family of farmers and traders, I was educated in this mindset with a high respect in natural resources. One day I red a news about my country: the government was deploring the fact that our coastline waters were becoming more unproductive in terms of sea food and Cameroon was importing more that 120 thousand tonnes of fish per year to satisfy the internal market demand. Then I said to myself "why not specialize myself in fish farming ?". Then I was sure I wanted to deepen my knowledge in environmental sciences and aquaculture, the next step was to find the suitable program in Europe.

- Of all the emails I sent to program managers in Universities, I noticed a clear sign of humility and pro-activity from the ones from Finnish Universities. Even though everything was written in the web pages of the University, my "stupid" and "obvious" questions always had humble and professional answers, and I am very sensitive to this kind of attitude. Mails from from other countries were really different

- Finland has more than 180 thousand lakes: suitable place for me to study fish and Aquatic sciences

- I read a lot about the Finnish environmental laws and policy and felt so amazed. My dream was to come and learn how they do this in practice and how they organize themselves to make the perfect equilibrium between economic development and environmental protection.

One important reason (and may be the most important for somebody like me coming from a financially modest family) why I decided to choose Finland is that studying in public institutions in Finland is free and absolutely free of tuition fees (though there is a registration fee you should pay in the beginning of each year, I paid nearly 90 Euros as a Master’s student). So you study for free, in well equipped classroom and labs, you attend seminars for free, practical and field work are all free; using computers, libraries and all study facilities is free. And behold all those facilities are of high quality and updated regularly. But unfortunately the only thing I wanted to be free is not: meals in student’s restaurant…Yes meals; I enjoy the food served in restaurants of the University of Jyväskylä, for the cleanness, richness and respect of individual dietary restrictions and preferences. I think I should create a completely different message just to tell you about Finish food and dietary system. 

Finnish government and politics

I have been always fascinated when hearing about Finland in international news and foreign affairs. I mean the way Finland is governed and how Finland chooses the future it wants. Only good news dominated all what I read and heard. Always among the top first countries in terms of transparency and good governance, human rights, women empowerment, social security system, environmental protection, education system (many people still wonder why Finnish children start going to school very late -7 years old- but later perform better than others who started school much earlier). Besides these elements I knew Finland is not an economy-driven country and that it is not easy to get a job in Finland, but that was not my preoccupation and as I said the first arguments dominated, even more I believe if you have a talent and the perfect education, job is not that much a big deal.