Work, Family and School: Balanced Post-Graduate Programs for Full-Time Workers in Finland

1. Work, Family and School: Balanced Post-Graduate Programs for Full-Time Workers in Finland Matti Koivisto, Principal Lecturer, PhD South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences Finland

2. Finland? Source: WorldAtlas.com

3. LEAST CORRUPTED COUNTRIES HIGHEST INCOME TAX FOR THE MARRIED Turkey Denmark Finland The Netherlands

4. Extremely unscientific formula of happiness HAPPINESS = (Daily mugs of coffee + Annual income taxes) Survive * --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Amount of bribes you have to pay

5. The point: We must know the contextFinland has high tax rates TOTAL INCOME TAXES HOUSTON, TX BROOKLYN, NY FINLAND 22,20% 31,02% 39,8%* * Contains 6,75 % mandatory retirement contributions

6. In our rapidly changing world • Employees have to update their knowledge, skills and competencies to excel in the working world. • The number of adult students has increased in all forms and levels of education including universities. • Adult students bring non-traditional characteristics to campuses including part-time enrollment, full-time employment, and increased family obligations.

7. In this presentation • A model for analyzing different roles of professionals returning to university is developed. • The model is then applied to describe the current support systems for adult learners in Finland and to analyze a Finnish postgraduate program solely targeted for professional returning to college.

8. THE MODEL

9. All of us have multiple roles • Work and non-work roles (Frone, 2003) • According to the role conflict theory the roles compete with each other in terms of time and energy (Greenhouse & Beutell, 1985) • Work-School Conflict (e.g. Cinamon, 2018)

10. Adult learners challenge universities • Adult learners have a wide variety of experiences that influence both their motivation and expectations. • They want to share and discuss their own experiences and learn from their peers. • The content of studies must have relevancy back at the workplace. • Above all, they do not want to waste their valuable time

11. Some earlier finding on adult learners VARIABLES INFLUENCING LEARNING (O´Connor & Cordova 2010): • individual characteristics, • the work and • the learning environment. The intersections of these three are: • personal relevance between individual characteristics and learning environment, • job involvement between individual characteristics and work environment • content relevance between learning and organizational environment. BARRIERS OF ADULT LEARNERS (Cross 1981): • Institutional barriers: practices that discourage working professionals from participating in educational activities such as inconvenient schedules, locations, and tuition fees. • Situational barriers: issues related to the adult student’s current life such as job and home responsibilities. • Dispositional barriers: topics related to attitudes and self-perceptions about the adult student as a learner.

12. Life-balance model for adult learners Model combines: • Role theory • Intersections of the variables • Obstacles to study Logic of the model: Adult learners have different roles. The stakeholders’ support or resistance affect how easily they are able to overcome the dispositional, institutional and situational barriers to study and find a balance between these different roles.

13. Higher education for adult learners in Finland

14. Dual model of higher education • The Finnish higher education system consists of universities and Universities of Applied Sciences (UASs). • According to the Ministry of Education and Culture the difference between them is as follows: • Universities focus on scientific research and education based on it. • UASs offer a more practical education responding to working life needs. In addition, the focus of UASs research and development (R&D) activities is not on basic but on applied R&D. • Both of them have Bachelor and Master programs but PhD can be done only in the universities.

15. Master programs at universities of applied sciences • The special characteristic of the UAS master programs is that they are targeted to people with years of work experience. • Students can apply to a Master program organized by an UAS only if they have at least three years of work experience after gaining an undergraduate degree. • Master programs organized by the Finnish universities do not have this requirement.

16. Support for adult learners in Finland • Returning students face institutional, situational and dispositional barriers to study. • In Finland some national policies are created to support adult learners in two major areas money and time. • Financial adult education enablers: • Education for a degree is free at all levels. • Adult education allowance • Conditions of eligibility: at least eight years of employment history and they must study full time

17. The amount of the allowance

18. The popularity of the allowance About 0,7 % of the workforce

19. Support for adult learners continued • To overcome the second obstacle, finding time to study, Finland has enacted Study Leave Law. • It allows an employee to take sabbatical for further education. • The details of the law are beyond the scope of the presentation, but in general an employee who has worked at least one year for the same employer can take up to two years unpaid time off to study. • The employee can return his or her job after the leave.* * In Finland we do not have at-will contracts and employers must have a legal reason to fire an employee.

20. study

21. The postgraduate program under study • The program is targeted for working professionals returning to college. • The UAS responsible for the program has made the following three decisions of minimizing the institutional barriers faced by the students: • The program uses a blended learning method to limit the amount of time spent in the classrooms. • All lectures are organized outside the office hours to allow students to work fulltime if they decide to do so. • Two groups meet at the same time in two different cities to reduce students’ travel time. • The teacher travels between two cities (this week here – next week there). • The classrooms have a video connection between them and all students use their own computers.

22. Study design The aim of the study was to find out: • How well the current students have been able to find a balance between their different roles and what things affects it. • Students perceptions on decision to use blended learning instead of full online approach. A small scale survey (N=42) • Work experience of the students after the Bachelor´s degree varied between 3 and 25 years (mean 11.6, standard deviation 5.2). • The average age of a student was 40.8 years as the youngest student was 28 and the oldest 56 years old.

23. Results of the study p<0.05 p<0.05

24. Results of the study continued p<0.05

25. Implementation method • Although online learning has many advantages, the large majority of the participants preferred blended learning to online learning. • 92.9 per cent of the students disagreed or strongly disagreed with a statement that the program could be implemented fully online. • Students seem to value highly the possibility to learn from their peer. • The role of the other students was not only limited to learning but students also think that they received a lot of support from their peers during the face-to-face sessions.

26. Use of governmental support • Only two students were on a study leave and both of them received the adult education allowance. • The rest of the students worked full time. • Why?

27. FINDINGS

28. Key findings • The findings of the study confirm that adult learners have a number of different roles and to succeed in their studies they must find a balance between work, family, and school lives. • Programs specially targeted for adult learners help them to overcome the institutional barriers to study. • The results also suggest that students find situational barriers more severe than dispositional and institutional barriers. • However, it is important to bear in mind that the survey was carried out only among adults who have already returned to college. People who have not made the same decision yet might find dispositional and institutional barriers more relevant to them. I need to strongly state that this idea requires further study.

29. Motivation to study: Self-development More support needed: From employers Main barrier: issues related to the adult student’s current life KEY TO SUCCESS: BALANCE BETWEEN DIFFERENT ROLES

30. YOUR QUESTIONS BEFORE MY QUESTIONS

31. Areas of discussion • Findings among happy coffee drinking tax payers (read Finns) cannot be generalized directly to other countries, • Questions for international audience: • Do you recognize the increased need for adult education at universities in your country? • Do you already have more adult learners in your campuses? • What are their main obstacles to study in your country? • What have universities, governments and companies in your country done to help adult learners? • What should we do differently in Finland?