“We wanted to make the course available in English as a way to offer Finnish university education for free to an international audience,” says
By taking the English-language course, students who speak Finnish can also increase their proficiency in software development terminology as well as improve their opportunities for finding employment in a field where most businesses conduct their activities in English.
“The course is also well suited to students of the University’s international master’s programmes, many of whom don’t speak Finnish,” Luukkainen says.
A thousand new coders
One of the goals for the course is to train a thousand new coders in Finland by the end of the year, which will happen if all those currently registered for the course complete it. The course materials are also utilised by the University of Turku and the University of Tampere in their teaching.
A shortage of coders has been a hot topic for some time already, and, among other responses, the
Close connections with employers
Concrete evidence of the coder shortage can be seen in the businesses collaborating on the course, such as Konecranes.
“Increasingly, the development of our products and services is in fact software development. There is also a growing need for skilled developers,” says Juha Pankakoski, Executive Vice President at Konecranes.
“In particular we need experts who are proficient in the wide range of technologies and applications in our business environment. There are currently too few of these experts. This will unnecessarily slow down our development and our ability to succeed in the market,” says Pankakoski.
The course, designed by the University of Helsinki and the software company Houston Inc., involves a great deal of business collaboration, for example, in the form of hackathons and guest lectures. The course has close connections with employers through both the
The participating companies have made a
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