Internationalising Higher Education

This poster presentation will focus on the efforts of the newly established International Master's Programme in Business and Technology at the Tampere University of Technology to enhance the employability of international graduates in Finland. International business programmes often find it challenging to get their international graduates employed in Finland because it is the shared assumption that for management jobs one must speak fluent Finnish. The programme encourages students to use their cultural background to their advantage and gain valuable experience through a student-run consulting company. The company, TSBT Consulting Ltd, allows international students to acquire business cases where they can use their cultural background, language skills and engineering Bachelor degree as their primary assets while learning various management-related skills. Most of the cases relate to reverse marketing as Finnish companies representing different industries are frequently interested in finding new suppliers, for example China and India. The programme allows students to use their assets not only during their study but also when seeking employment with Finnish companies.