Perhaps this is why I love the country so much:
Appropriately, Marianne Korkalainen’s a high school in Rautavaara, a small town in eastern Finland, enrolled at least 20 new students each year. This fall, his shrinking municipality will send him only about 12. But Ms Korkalainen, the head teacher, has a plan: she intends to invite half a dozen young people from poor countries to help her fill her empty seats. A determined youngster from places like Myanmar, Vietnam and Tanzania will replace their hot cities with his snowy bolthole. They will receive a Finnish education, at the expense of Finnish taxpayers.
Here’s another from The Economist. Finland will soon have a shrinking population, and worse:
By 2030 the country could have about 10% fewer children between the ages of 4-18, according to the report. eu measurements. By 2040 their levels could be a fifth less. This creates a problem especially in rural schools, which suffer from fewer children and urban migration. Hundreds have closed their doors in recent decades. Some now offer bungs, such as free driving lessons and small cash “scholarships,” to local youth, in hopes of keeping them around.
There is even a Finnish startup, Finest Future, that sells Finnish courses to poor students around the world, hoping to prepare them for a Finnish taxpayer-funded education in Finland. The belief is that recruiting people in this way is easier and more efficient than trying to find good job seekers abroad and train them in Finnish later. Get the Kalevalas down your throat!
Finland has a foreign-born population of about 9 percent, below the Western European average. I don’t know if this school policy is a good idea, but I do know that many people are not good at thinking about it in terms of cost benefit.
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