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Fully funded Finnish Government scholarships
Today, I continue with the discussion on scholarship opportunities, and the Finnish Government scholarship opportunities to be specific.
There are a number of channels where one can find key information about the Government of Finland scholarship opportunities.
The government scholarships
According to information, aside of Finnish universities offering scholarships there is the scholarships opportunity offered by the Finnish government.
One can find information about this from the many portals that give guidance to such opportunities. The Government of Finland scholarship is fully funded.
Basically, the scholarship is open to students pursuing the Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes in Finnish universities. There are currently more than 5,000 scholarships for Europe without the IELTS, which is the International English Language Testing System (see, www.opportunitiescorners.info).
Eligibility for scholarships
As I wrote some time ago, the educational scholarships in Finland are aimed at gifted students who come from non-European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA), who are liable to tuition fees and who apply for international Master’s programmes at Finnish universities (see www.studyinfinland.fi).
This suggests that a foreign student is only eligible if he/she is required to pay tuition fees for the studies being pursued because they are coming from a non-EU country. Finland’s education had been free even for foreign students until 2017 when this changed.
There is also the category of Doctoral Fellowships as a form of scholarship for doctoral level studies and research at Finnish universities.
More importantly, students of any nationality are eligible to apply for the government scholarship, according to information on the opportunitiescorners.info portal. Applications open usually in January each year.
University programmes and scholarships
What one needs to consider is that the government scholarship is tied to the programmes offered by the various universities and Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS)
Again, as I said some time ago each university or university of applied sciences has its own scholarship system. Therefore, the government scholarship apparently widens the scholarship opportunities generally in Finland.
What the student only needs to do is to apply for the scholarship from the university in question at the same time when he/she applies for admission or later from the government’s scholarship programme.
The student needs to search for the degree programme he/she would be interested in applying to and follow up with checking the scholarship options and procedures, which can be found from the university’s own admissions info pages and other portals.
Good performance
It is good to keep in mind that the chances of a foreign student securing a scholarship to study would depend on the student’s high grades.
The chances would not be bright if the student had low grades. Concerning funding opportunities, the information is that the educational scholarships in Finland are aimed at gifted students mainly coming from outside the EU/EEA.
Moreover, as I keep saying, the fact that Finland is encouraging or trying to attract foreign students does not mean it should be a dumping ground for any low level stuff.
There is the need for international students to perform admirably, so as to have the chance for a scholarship.
Potential students need to study hard or be serious with their current studies in their home countries and adhere to advice or guidance from their teachers/lecturers.
This will undoubtedly help the students score good grades and enhance their chances for a scholarship to pursue further studies abroad and build their careers when they are back home after their studies. Thank you.
The writer is a Ghanaian lecturer at
University of Helsinki in Finland
By Perpetual Crentsil
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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