International students to help with the need for IT experts

The participants of the engineering programme in cyber security have been recruited from abroad, mainly from Asia. The recruitment has been carried out in cooperation with the education export company Edunation. The engineering education is implemented on Salo IoT Campus.

­“Despite the challenges in the beginning, we have managed to start the studies and are expecting strong growth for 2020. The next group is meant to start in February 2020, and in the spring, we are also looking for students for a group starting in the autumn”, says Head of Education and Research Tero Reunanen from Turku University of Applied Sciences.

The representatives of the City of Salo, Turku University of Applied Sciences and Edunation shared their views at an event organized for the media on Monday 18 November on Salo IoT Campus.

Mayor and General Director of Salo, Lauri Inna, stated that the number of open positions is increasing in Salo. Inna considers the cyber security education an excellent field of the future. He says that all organizations will need cyber security competence in the future.

­“Higher education studies in Finland are globally interesting and top of the line”, says Inna.

Already a lack of IT experts

“The IT field will grow regardless of the general economic development”, Tero Reunanen points out.

Advisor Peter Vesterbacka from Edunation considers getting international students to Finland to be of utmost importance. According to Vesterbacka, the number of graduates from Finnish higher education institutes is not adequate to meet the need for experts.

The aim and wish is that after graduation, the students could work in Finland and possibly also start new enterprises.

­“The lack of technology experts has for years been a considerable impairment in terms of the growth of enterprises in Southwest Finland. The current opening enables a significant increase in the number of students and graduates in the upcoming years. It has been a pleasure to see how enthusiastic our students are about developing themselves into highly skilled experts of the future”, says Rector and President Vesa Taatila from Turku University of Applied Sciences.

“From the perspective of Salo IoT Campus it is important that the studies in Salo have finally started. Our goal is to yield new, competent workforce to the campus through this path and get the students to stay in Salo also after their studies. When the studies proceed, we help students find practical training or workplaces on campus. Equivalently, we help companies to find new experts among the students on the campus”, says the CEO of Salo IoT Campus, Jukka Vakula.