 Good afternoon to everybody. I understand we have been in live now. Welcome to the seminar organized together by the Guild and Tartu University. Tartu University is also part of the Guild, so we are all together in this initiative. The title of the seminar is National Strategies and the Role of Universities in Integrating International Students to the Local Labor Market. And it's part of the series of seminars that was initiated by the Guild insight we imagine in research-led education in a digital age. That was mainly written by Joe Wangui, who is also here today. And we have had two seminars already and one is still to come in January. So welcome to the last one also. Today's seminar was initiated mainly by my personal big interest, but also our national big question of how to better integrate international students. And looking at the number of participants in this seminar and the eagerness and the people who are also speaking at this seminar, it seems to me that it's not just our challenge. But very shortly before I give the word to the speakers, very shortly about the Estonian background, during the last six, seven years, the number of international students in Estonia has tripled. So it's a very quick increase. Currently there are in Estonian universities around 13% of international students. And during last years, since the labour market situation is very much in the shortage of people, many students actually stay to work in Estonia. So we have around half of our international graduates working in Estonia at least in the next year. We don't know the number for the five-year period where we have statistics internationally also. It's probably the number is not so big, maybe so many years afterwards. And with this kind of vision or this kind of situation, we have the expectation also from the state that the universities would work more strategically in engaging international students who want to stay here. So for example, there are clearly fields like IT and engineering, where most students are staying and the humanities and maybe the business where there are less students staying in the country. So the state is mainly hoping that we would teach them better Estonian language so they could stay in the country. But it's quite clear that teaching the language, if it's not in the very massive amount, can't guarantee the language skills necessary for working in the Estonian labour market. So there have to be other strategies also and the students have to probably learn most of the language after graduation. Currently we have just to show a taught university example. We have just a few months ago agreed that every international students should study six ECTS credit points Estonian language and culture course, which is a very short course to gain any language knowledge, but this is something new for us. And of course there is apprenticeship programmes and also this kind of international welcome centre, solving all practical problems, but still I think we need to think more about how to engage them to the local labour market. And that's our situation, these are our challenges and I'm really looking forward for the Finnish and the Dutch case today's seminar, who have longer experience and I think especially in the Netherlands, much more massive experience with engaging international students. And we'll start with the Finnish case and we have the seminar is built in the way that we have two parts, we have two sessions, first the case study from Finland and we have two speakers both speaking 15 minutes. We have Charles Matjes from the Academy of, he's an Academy of Finland research fellow from the University of Juvaskilla and then followed by Eric Carver, who is the strategic services for teaching, coming from the strategic services for teaching from the University of Helsinki. And then we have 10 minutes for the discussion and I encourage you very much to submit your questions to the Q&A window or longer comments or links or whatever you want to share in the chat room and so we could tackle these during the discussion. And the second session will be shared by Jo and Guri and it's a case from the Netherlands and there are two speakers there also and Jo will introduce them and finally we'll wrap up the seminar by Jan Balmokski from the Guild. But now I'll give the word to Charles, the floor is yours. Hello and thank you for the introduction. And I haven't asked to talk about sort of the national level, what is happening in Finland here, looking at the factors to impact international student retention and the strategies and policy actions that are being enacted in Finland here. I want to say one quick word about my research. It's being supported by the Academy of Finland and I really appreciate the support I received. So I want to talk about here, what do we know? What is the research? What is the data we have on our international student in Finland? We'll talk about that in the national policy goals. We'll talk about somewhat of the disconnect between our infrastructure and our policy goals. And then what are the next steps? What are the national level actions? What is Finland? I want to take a first step back and look at what is the rationale in general for retaining international students more broadly. If you look at policy documents, whether I cite the European Commission here as well as literature, it talks about international recruitment and retaining them is tied to economic development, particularly around retaining them for skilled labor. International students are framed as ideal immigrants because they are skilled, i.e. they are trained and educated and most are in the prime employment age. And they're attractive for host countries for a number of reasons. They've been trained for that labor market. If they're trained to recruit, then internationally-trained individuals, they do not require a lengthy process or complex process to recognize their degrees or their skills in the labor market. And in short, they offer a premium over immigrants educated and trained elsewhere. Briefly about the Finnish system here, it's a binary system. So it's 14 universities, 20-20 university applied scientists. Roughly the same amount of students is in each sector, just over 150,000 each. Though the university sector has a slightly higher rate of international students. It is important to note that Finland has the highest degree share of programs offered in English in a non-speaking English country in Europe. And then lastly here, we're sort of a late comer to tuition fees, and we introduced tuition fees in 2017. So what do we know? I have pulled data here and information from three papers I've published in the last 18 months. These are the three papers. They're included in the reference section here. These are also all open access. I will note the second one though is in Finnish, but these are all open access and available. I want to talk about the research design real quickly with these. And I want to talk about data protections. I can spend all day here talking about data protections here, but I do want to note there are a lot of data protections involved with this. And I bring this up because I'm dealing with, in this research you're dealing with a sense of data. So we look at individuals and we track the individuals by their personal ID number through multiple years through cohorts, the graduating cohorts, and the first two papers are listed and then the enrollment cohorts on the last paper there. And we look at their student data, their information. We go into the census files. So where do they live? Are they married? Children? The employment data or their earnings and then also the income distribution. So their taxes paid and the social benefits received. Again, a lot of highly sensitive data. And I do want to stress through a lot of data protection involved with this. And in the papers that talks more about the theoretical framing, but we do use international student migration theory as our framework. So what do we know? If we look at the international students who come to Finland to study, we see about two thirds stay, whether three years after graduation or five years after initial enrollment. This is pretty high. If you look globally. In terms of positive factors, we see family ties. Be married, whether to a Finnish national or a foreign national, having children, having parents in country, these were all positive factors. So from a policy perspective, we really want to create and think about the environment our international students are in and we want to create a conducive environment for their families. This helps retention. In terms of employment factors, those were a positive factor. If the students were employed and particularly white collar professional employment were positive factors for retention. Charles, very sorry. Can you a little bit move your mic because it's coming and going, the voices. Okay. Sorry about that. The next is about, there's an inverse relationship we found between graduates in terms of the degree type and the stay rate. So the higher the degree, the lower the stay rate after graduation. So our bachelor students were staying at a higher rate than our master students, which are staying at a higher rate than our PhD graduates. If we look at where our students are graduating from and staying in region, we see that the international students were staying in the capital region at a very high rate, about 85%. The large cities, which is Turku and Tampere is about 60%. But then if we move out to the countryside, the international students who graduate from those universities, they were staying in region at a much lower level. So about 30% were staying in that area, whereas 70% were still in Finland, but they were moving to the larger metropolitan areas, primarily for labor market opportunities. We do see differences in earnings and employment between international students and our finished graduates. In general, our finished graduates earn more and more employed at a higher rate. It was roughly about a 10% higher rate for our finished graduates compared to our international graduates in terms of comparative degrees. However, if we look more closely at employment, we see that white collar employment, which is professional employment. If the international student can get that employment, we see the difference in earnings compared to the finished graduates, either significantly reduces or goes away completely. So from a policy perspective, it is not just about getting employment, it's about getting that white collar employment and it really reduces the inequality or inequity, if you will, of the returns of your teaching. Now, this last point here has probably got the most interest from policymakers in Finland. And here, what we find is, on average, all of our international graduates were economically positive. So what this means is, this is three years after graduation, we looked, is that these students, on average, were paying anywhere from 2,300 to 9,300 more in taxes than the social benefits they received. So in terms of return on the investment by the government, if you will, this was a good investment. The students were staying at a high rate and were economically positive contributing to the country. If we switch now to look at sort of the policy goals, Finland traditionally has been a country of emigration, not necessarily one in immigration. However, since 2001, the government has enacted numerous policies to attract and retain international students. And this quote here is a really emblematic of those efforts. In April, the Ministry of Education and Culture released new policy goals of tripling the intake of international students by 2030 and retaining the amount of 75%. This is really ambitious goals. And it's with that, it's something that policy actions standpoint will take a lot of action all on a lot of different players, whether it's the institutions themselves, as well as the Finnish firms in the business community. Why this is such an issue is that Finland has Europe's fastest aging population. And this graphic here demonstrates it here. And what this shows is a higher proportion a number of pensioneers and elderly that are being supported by the working force in the Finnish labor market. And so this is a real need, not just from a tax-based standpoint, providing revenue for the government, but also providing the services. So do we have enough nurses? Do we have enough doctors? Do we have enough services for the society itself too? There is some disconnect between policy goals and investment. In general, we have to keep in mind that even though international students are highly desired and recruited by national and local labor markets, these national and local labor markets are contextually bound. And in Finland here, we find evidence of this that this is very difficult for international students to engage and enter into because of the lack of information. Or in other words, the lack of social capital, if you will, understanding how that labor market works, how to develop those networks and ties, and understanding how everything comes together. Another disconnect here is Finland, is the language of instruction is in English. So while the labor market, though, is in other languages, more specifically Finnish and Swedish. And there's also evidence of Finland's Finnish firms having some reluctancy to hire non-Finnish speakers. And so what you get here is international students who do not speak Finnish or do not speak it very well are having difficult accessing the Finnish firms. And then lastly here, it is important to note it has been noted for a challenging place for immigrants and international students due to racism and discrimination, particularly for students. So what is going on? What is being done about this? Well, the Finnish government has a clear goal of attracting international students. And this is throughout the government. And this is all the way at the top. So this is from the Prime Minister's office. It can be clearly seen that this is a high objective policy goal. Very recently, this fall in September, the roadmap for education-based and work-based immigration 2035 came out. The English version came out last month. It is available. It's a short document. It's about 35 pages, I believe. And it outlines a lot of the new policy actions and goals that the government is doing. Some of the highlights here is increasing the English language centers, daycare centers and schools. This gets to the point of supporting the international families. And about its idea is to keep international students here by keeping the family ties and the support for the families. Providing international recruitment services for the businesses, finished firms, including forecasts for immigration needs with a future forecast for skills needed at the national level. So what this means operationally is when there are forecasts for it, so many more nurses, what does this mean in terms of how much immigration for international students from foreign graduates to supplement our domestic supply? Also, there is development and introduction of service packages for institutions, fire education institutions to promote the integration and employability of graduates. And the support within the business community, particularly around the recognition of skills and qualifications earned abroad, as well as finishing switched language skills on the job as part of their on the job. Within Migrie, which is the Finnish migration services, Finland allows international graduates to stay two years on a renewable visa up to four. And there was an extended hours and staff initiative started in April. It was a deal directly with the increased demand for visas and to decrease the processing time of the residency permits. There is increasing emphasis on digitalization of these efforts. And the goal is to really get down to a one-month processing time for the educational permit. This is for international students as well as international staff and scholars, whether it's business scholars or staff hired into the universities. And then lastly here, there is a talent boost Finland initiative. This is a multi-agency initiative in Finland across multiple ministries that is really looking at trying to integrate increasing international improvement and then integration into society. Eric is going to talk about that aspect more specifically in his talk about the institutions. That is what I have and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Charles so much. I have one particular question about the presentation is asking about you have high percentage of retention 66% already and the question is are they all full-time employed or does it include also people who are applying for jobs? It is primarily they are employed in some aspects so part-time and full-time. Full-time employment I believe was, well the part-time employment made up a small percentage of that but it was mainly full-time. The majority was full-time. But yeah, those figures there were the combination of the two. Have you followed the percentage across years? I mean one year, three years, five years does it increase or decrease? We followed it for, I think that one, we followed it for seven years and it stayed relatively the same across the board. There was variation within years but it stayed pretty steady across the board. It was interesting what you said about the higher levels stay less, they retain less to the labour market but we have seen in Estonia but the numbers of course are not so big and the statistics we have is not for the long term yet but we have seen that for the PhD graduates 65% stay so it's even more than for the master's degrees and it's less for the bachelor's. The bachelor's continued to study and the masters are staying around 50% and the PhDs stay even more but probably the PhDs are leaving the postdoc also. Yeah, that's a lot of it is we believe a lot of that is tied up into the Finnish academic labour market which is very tight the last number of years and then also just the academic labour market to begin with there's a lot of people who have to move on to other institutions other countries to do postdocs and for the permanent positions so it's a mix of that. Okay, thank you and I believe the other sort of more discussion questions to the after Eric has made his presentation so and I give Eric the word to you. The floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Eric Carver and I work for the University of Helsinki and I approached this issue from maybe a little bit two perspectives today so I currently am in charge of the graduate tracking we do including our national students, Pauli Schern kind of the policy of guidance at the university level but I used to work as a career counselor and give my bilingual background I worked a lot with our international students and the degree programs that were the language of instruction was English so I'll look at university strategy and also a little bit about the regional strategies that we're dealing with in the Helsinki area I'll mention some of the details of the talent loose program and other related initiatives that help in to help to promote employment over the integration of international talent in Helsinki and then I'll maybe this kind of add a perspective into kind of the university context so about some lessons learned from our work when we were doing of course the career services is still there but when I was working there and what I've discussed with my former colleagues up until this point then Charles and I have prepared some questions for you to consider in your university and also kind of a national local regional level and then hope to introduce those at the end of my presentation just briefly I think most universities in Europe have the same strategic emphasis on internationalization of their institutions but also working as one of the tools for integration of international students there's a kind of a strong strategic emphasis in our institution to help our students to be international or finish defined work of course and that's something that we've been doing for a long time so that's not a new thing maybe more interesting is what does that actually mean so if we look at the current strategy we have there's going to be four components that I want to mention first and this goes to all our students not just the international students there's a focus on skills development that includes kind of the academic identity may I just I think you are moving further with your slides but we see the first slide only oh okay so it's if you just put it on the slide I think we'll see the slide version that is not the full screen okay let's try again does it work better now yeah now we see the fourth slide yeah okay alright so what I was trying to say is that there's an emphasis on skills development of course within the curriculum and it comes to employment or employability of course the skills are very important but specifically career skills I'll talk about a little about what that means more concretely and the ability for students to recognize their skills is an important component in when you're finding work intensify cooperation with employers that's important in our strategy second build bridges and connections within the curriculum with the world of work internships, traineeships you know project courses where students work you know real life projects given by our partners alumni partners other partners so just to create those networks and opportunities for our students and then we engage in the ecosystem of helping to promote the international experts of finding work in the Helsinki area so the university is a partner active partner with the city of Helsinki other regional partners and of course the employers Helsinki has a similar roadmap for immigration based on work studies and entrepreneurship as has the government so it kind of funnels down to also the regional level again there's a lot of things in the strategy but I guess maybe the most important thing is that there's similar policy goals that align from the government to the local government to the institutions of higher education that's a very important space for the development of course it means that you have a lot of actors so all the actors have to work together and look at some things that you have to do those two that can add availability of services in English of course hiring practices and all the other some availability of opportunities to learn Finnish and Swedish and so forth but those are kind of the I think the components are there for us to move forward nationally, locally and at the university level the talent boost program that Charles already mentioned has some key components that are very useful I think in this field so of course you have the career management training or career skills training more Finnish language courses more mentoring networking possibilities and has more training positions so to create those connections with the with the society that the international student is studying it's important to integrate these components as much as you can within the curriculum you know it's a busy time most of our students international students come in for a two-year master's program many of them pay tuition so they're very you know the time is of of essence so the more you integrate in the things you need within the curriculum within the study credits is better than just to have extracurricular things built on top and of course you have to be an active partner not just your own curriculum or your own activities but in the wider ecosystem with the city and the employers as already mentioned there's other projects and I'm just you can reference these later to just kind of give a broader view you have support for immigrants already here with higher education and seeking higher education that's a same-hand project then you have academic yeah I think we're again stuck in the same slide the slide 4 okay well is it it's a problem is that we don't see the full screen but it will see the version where you have on the left hand side you have all the slides and okay what about now we'll still see the same version and the slide number 4 okay well then we're going to start again okay yeah yeah it's kind of hard to know still the same okay now we are on slide 6 but still the same version okay what slide do you see now 6 but it's the same version so it just maybe I don't know let's continue but we have to be sure to understand whether you have moving the slides okay okay okay well maybe I'll just mention the kind of the things you're doing so there's the kind of the counseling and advising part then you have academic readiness part and then you have the language program which is more geared to helping all you know international students but also international staff to learn finish better and just make more opportunities available then you have the kind of the line where you do qualification training so how do you build if you have a degree or a similar degree from another country be a doctor or a nurse or not a nurse we don't train those but like early childhood education so how do you build those kind of programs that bridge and develop the language skills for you to be qualified to do that profession in Finland but can you see the slide about career council perspective now or not no it's still the talent first program at the University of Helsinki oh yeah well let's do that let's see it's kind of hard to know not my first zoom probably nobody's first zoom so now we see slide number 8 which is the career council perspective okay maybe this works now sorry about that I don't know what's the problem so some lessons learned here's some statistics about our graduate tracking survey but we don't see the statistics slide try again can you move it to the I mean which way you move it you yourself see the right slide yeah maybe you share the wrong screen if you have several screens okay is this better now yeah now we see that's great sorry about that I hope nobody's watching this recording so here's some of the data about our graduates five years after graduation there's five cohorts and we've asked them for their respective view on what things are relevant for finding work and the dark blue is Finnish citizens and the purple are all our other graduates so non-Finnish citizens and what you see there is our non-Finnish citizen graduates report that everything is more important on average finding work than Finnish students and that means that there's more more things are seen as important international experience there's a wide gap there you know ability to describe your skills work experience is very important but then if you look at all the other components like social media you know other experiences contacts and networks international graduates tend to value those as more important finding work in the Finja in general just got to show kind of more work you have to do to get the similar kind of outcomes after graduation than your Finnish counterparts this is also mentioned in Charles presentation I work as I say I used to work in the career services just a few notes about what I think is important when you're deploying your career services in relation to employability often times and there's a big focus and this is where we historically start is how do you work the integration placement models so how do you provide work opportunities, internship opportunities project courses that's important so the direct connection with the employers then how do you make sure career skills are part of the integrated guidance the rest of your guidance system from the academic staff to other experts working with students in guidance and then what I used to work in that's something that I see is very important I already mentioned is the curriculum so career skills, career management skills within the curriculum integrated there course small groups whatever the method is that you're using but that all students have access to career development as part of your education so all those three I think are important maybe I'll skip this given our time constraints but this is a long commitment University of Helsinki has to integrate the career skills and the career development support within the degrees there's many different models of building career skills I'm not saying this is the only one but you should have a pedagogical goals on what do you want to achieve with your career development plans or pedagogy self-assessment skills is very important the international students in particular how do they transfer over how do they explain their experience from another country opportunity awareness goes to knowing the labor market knowing the world of work whatever you're seeking decision-making action planning and then job hunting skills and some of those are very universal but some of them are very low there's a job hunting culture of sorts it's beneficial for you to know in a particular country very important to know that all your students need career skills so I wouldn't separate students in this way but there's some special needs special things that international students know and it's important to be aware of those and bridge the gap provide information that's just maybe not available if you just haven't lived in the country or studied and very important to explain in a short time span is to understand the different context of your international students they're not a homogeneous group they have their own background their own story their own cultures, identities and also they face different things within your society prejudice, racism, sexism other obstacles and it's very important to work with your students whether it be a council setting or a teaching setting but you don't assume anything based on somebody's background you listen, you create a safe space for people to share their views their questions how does it work here what should I do I don't understand why things do it this way have a safe space and let people explain their identity and their context themselves which you know, based on anything and it's very important that there's a space to also talk about the experience to be negative or positive that nobody belittles this is very important support agency, your students do things that and find work and seek opportunities themselves respect and empathy of course there's a very kind of counter-counseling ethics background here the important for your degree of programs is of course how do you design them in a way that supports their integration so of course the program identity and practices at the core why is the program there something that's needed but also how do you throughout the study process make sure the career planning skills and career development is possible and how you build an environment where that professional growth takes place and you also have the opportunities to connect to the wider society here's some sources and here are the questions that Charles and I put together at the end of my presentation so there's questions that relate to national, regional local policies and practices do you target every immigrant the same way or are you more nuanced in the way you approach different groups that are needs what is the role the university in all this political policy making at the local regional national level how involved are you are you keeping true to your goals as an institution are you working together are you challenging the society together what's the right role language and culture studies before starting studies during or after or all of it how do you work with different partners to create space for that how do you make your policy system more responsive to the feedback and the lived experiences of your students how do you listen basically and understand then university policies and practices expectation management program design language strategy integration into the community your community university community program planning and career management skills and how do you create opportunities connections and networks for the international students so there sorry for the technical hiccups during the way no problem I think it happens to all of us it's so I would say relief that everybody makes small mistakes so it's I think this is something to learn but yeah we have several questions that are answered by Charles already in written form but I first ask you have a very ambitious aim from the government side as I understand and there are two questions in regard to that is one is the question how is the wider society accepting that because I think it was Charles who was referring to the maybe a xenophobic attitudes and I have an additional question to that if there is a national aim to increase the number of international students and then to stay more in the country does it mean that the government is saying also which fields you should teach in English and does it support this curricula somehow I don't know which ones to answer well I'll start with the first one there I kind of answered it in the chat so there is a variation of support of this policy so there are strong support from some sectors of society and there is strong opposition from other sectors I would say in general overall it is a positive and is viewed as a positive mainly I would say Finland going back to what I talked about the aging population basically Finland we have three choices of what we can do we can either increase our taxes or more babies or increase immigration and so we're left with that choices there and increasing immigration is seen as the more desirable of those choices for a multitude of reasons there is visible and notable pushback on that but I would say in general I would characterize it as positive in general maybe just continue there as an organized career counselor two of the terms that my international students taught me was first one was the English bubble that refers to the area or a space in your life where everything functions in English, university stores, restaurants you can do anything basically in Helsinki with English but when you start looking for work you hit the finish bar but there is some fields of industry for example IT, gaming where all the organizations are within the English bubble so they operate in English and there's no requirement at least in the beginning so I think this is kind of politically speaking most political parties are pro-immigration at least work-based immigration, skilled labor immigration with few notable exceptions in the political sphere but then when it comes to what are you willing to do to either make the English bubble bigger or the finish far more easier to penetrate then we go into what Charles was talking about which is the disconnect between investment in programs and the policy goals the very ambitious policy goals that we're doing but I'm fairly I don't know if you agree Charles but I'm fairly impressed with the roadmap the national one and the city of Helsinki one that's being prepared so there's a high level of ambition now that maybe hasn't been around for maybe say 10 years ago Yeah I think to me the more striking thing about it is the government has been supportive in this direction for a while now I think for me what's more striking is the business community themselves have come out very much in favor and they have been a part of this roadmap so they have taken a very active role in shaping it and so I think there's a recognition by the society that this is needed for the society and I think Eric is exactly right the type of immigration we're talking about here is work based education based immigration this is well supported for the most part but then when other forms of immigration that's where you see variations of the support for that there I come back to the second part of my question is do I understand that beside this ambitious national strategy you don't have so much support for particular programs I don't know you said that nurses are you like nurses or you're like I don't know IT specialists does the government support that you could hire for example or you could enroll students free of charge do you have special scholarships or something to these programs Eric if you want to start I'm happy to answer this yeah go ahead okay in general this would be a very long two hour conversation to answer this question it's a very nuanced question in many ways the short answer is the government is supporting the universities and the university of applied sciences to develop these programs and they very much want these programs to align with employment outcomes so economic development if you will however it is up to those institutions they have the freedom to decide what programs they develop what programs they support and how they support it so a lot of these programs are very much in line with the university of applied sciences and the universities of applied sciences so they have the ability to offer a scholarship attached in some form and how that is operationalized for the students it varies across the universities and applied sciences in Finland so you see a wide variation there some will offer scholarships a small amount for all students some will offer just a larger amount institutions to take an active role in developing these. And so it's the institution level and the programmatic levels really within the institutions that really take the active role in shaping these programs. There is desire and some support to align these programs with economic development goals, but there's no directive indicating that this must be done or this is the way to do it. And so Eric, I don't know if you have agreed on that or I think there's kind of maybe three parts to what you're looking at. So it's kind of the degrees themselves and how the university funding system guides universities to develop certain kind of degrees, certain kind of fields and where to increase and where not. So like early childhood education teachers should make shortage of them in the capital region. So everybody wants the university health to educate more of those. That's, we get more funding for it. So there's very direct direction there. Then when you talk about immigrants, you can look at, okay, you come in to a degree and you study a degree in a university and then to that particular field and that particular profession. But there's also people that also already have a degree somewhere else and then they have to do some kind of either language training or additional certifications. And those are more very nuanced. So early childhood education doctors, nurses where there's clear shortage, ongoing shortage all the time. And then there's more investment in the programs that directly target those groups and try to get into the labor market as quickly as possible. Okay, thank you. But we have other questions also. The one question is this, how do you work with international alumni, the students who are living or the graduates who are living in the country? Is there special programs also for that in this direction? Yeah, we have alumni registry and it's very important that we try to get everybody, you know, all of our graduates to sign up for that. And that's also important when we survey them, people that are not in Finland. We have very good statistics, Finland's statistics on everybody who lives in Finland. If you wanna know what our international graduates or Finnish graduates living abroad is the surveys the best tool we have. Then we also have alumni clubs around the world. There's a few of them that try to support that, but it's very important. It's very important to have that relationship and to build it right away. And not after graduation, but during the process and as that person is getting ready to graduate, that's very important. And then we actually had one question about, I don't know, it disappeared somewhere, but there was a question, does the retaining in the labor market depends also on the fact whether they worked? As I understood, Charles, I think you showed the data that it depends on whether they worked during the studies. And the question was whether it's somehow limited to they have the, can they work as much as they want? Or is it limited to certain hours? No, they're eligible to work. The difficulty is them finding the work. So if you look at the international student barometer and the results on that, a lumber they've finished universities come in pretty low on there in terms of satisfaction by the students of finding work outside of their studies. There is limitation there. And a lot of it goes back to sort of the Finnish labor market in that there are very specific skills and recognitions and certificates and training recognized for certain types of jobs. So in terms of the jobs that are available for these international students just to do while they're studying, there's a very limited section of those employment opportunities there. But those who can find those work, and particularly the professional jobs before they graduate, those are receiving the real increase in staying within Finland in that case there. So, but there is a challenge to that there. And they have one clarifying question and then it's the last question is about more philosophical one again. The clarifying question is did I understand correctly that the international graduates can look for the job for two years after graduating which is very generous, I think so. Yes, yeah, they can look for up to two years and then they can renew it under certain circumstances up to additional two years. So it's a two plus two for a four max, for a four max. That was changed. It used to be a lot shorter. Yeah, it used to be a much shorter. And so I think it was 2018 that changed officially the law there. And so it's one of those things that I just have recently got access to that data. And so I'm interested in looking at that of seeing who has transitioned from student visas into other visas, but it's something that, I mean, literally last week we got the final approval for that data. And so we're hoping to get that data soon. It does mean that the students are eligible for the unemployment benefit during that time, for example. That, I do not think they are under the visa restrictions. I'm not sure. It doesn't matter. But they're eligible for other certain social benefits. But the actual subsidy stipend, I do not believe they're eligible for. And so part of that visa process is they have to demonstrate earnings, a certain amount of earnings in the bank account before they're granted that visa. So there are some financial restrictions, if you will, before that visa is given. And actually, we've got one more question, but I would like to finish with the more, I think, philosophical remark from Jan Palmowski, then you can probably end also in your summary. But the question is whether the national strategies and the university strategies should match each other, whether we, as a university, should maybe value the international sort of circling of brains, not so much sort of wanting all the brains to come to our country. So it's, I don't know, but I want to comment that and then it can go, give the word to the next session, but if you would like to say something shortly about that. I can. I think as an educational institution, you go quality first. And then the research goals and the educational goals you have. The second is you support your students and graduates in what they want. So I think, I've been always working hard to make more investments, more focus on helping our international students to find work in Finland. If they choose to, that's something they want. But that's a very big ethical principle that I have. If you don't want to stay, that's okay. Yeah, and this is actually, from a policy perspective, I've actually gotten a number of questions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on this in regards to the introduction of tuition fees. So how that is changing the mix of students or incoming students and where they're coming from. Before the introduction of tuition fees, we had a number of students coming from a lot of low socioeconomic countries because we had no tuition fees, it was free. And the worry is that these students, originally the students would come and then a large percentage of them would go back home. So part of this development and it was viewed in some ways as development aid. And now we're changing this amount of charging of tuition fees and that, are we changing then the focus of what we're doing for the education there? But I will say in general, my opinion, this is my opinion. I think the government is really focused on letting the institutions and the programs decide, have the freedom to decide what they want to do. They do give incentives and do point in certain directions. And so it's really, I think the institutions have a lot of ability to create and focus on the quality as they deem what is important to them. So I think it's a really nice environment for me to work in in that sense, because I feel like I have the support and the freedom to do that. So thank you very much indeed. We do have actually have from the timetable we still have two minutes. So we'll maybe we can answer the last question. It's a practical question also from whether the curricular structure is supporting students to work in parallel to the studies. And if you would like to. This is always a tricky one, because the programs you have very strict ECTS requirements. So you get into things like, how much language courses should we require or have part of that, let alone opportunities for working? Again, I think that you see a variation of this in how it plays out based on the individual student and their ability and desire to enact their agency, if you will, to do that. But the structures are pretty tight, I would say in terms of the degree requirements and the institutions are incentivized behind how we're funded in terms of our performance-based funding to get the students in and graduate out on a timely basis. Well, and that's why I think the integration into the curriculum, traineeships, project courses, ECTS currency support to doing the things you need to do to integrate into the labor market. But of course, summer times, off seasons, weekend, I mean, there's space for work, but I think that curriculum approach is better than to say, well, we hope that they find work. So that's, I think, more responsible. Yeah, and the new roadmap is indicating that particularly the Ministry of Education and Culture Education and Culture is really supporting of the institutions in integrating sort of the employability aspects into the curriculum. And so how that plays out, I think that's the next chapter of what those actual policy actions will be. So thank you very much indeed. We, as we usually say in Estonia, we are feeling like a smaller brother learning all the time from Finland. And this time again, I think you managed to be first with your very ambitious roadmap, I think, but we have the pleasure to learn from you. And now I'll give the word, thank you, Charles. Thank you, Eric. And I'll give the word to Joe to introduce the next session. Thank you very much, Arne. Thank you very much, Eric and Charles. Fascinating conversation. And I think those last two points are so important about visiting, reflecting on the role of the university in the ecosystem, but also what are the implications and how those various principles and strategies need to translate in our curricular and co-curricular offering to facilitate the pathways that we want to offer. And I'm sure we're going to revisit and go deeper in those points in the discussion that will follow our next session. And I cannot think of better speaker profiles to continue the conversation and give a perspective that would enable us to actually see both the patterns that are similar, but also the importance of learning from different case studies. So we're going to turn to the Netherlands and we're going to discuss and see more into that local ecosystem, but also how it interfaces with the national and international discussion that we had. So it's a great pleasure to introduce our two next speakers, Arts Van Bokove from the director at Zablauberg, but also private policy consultants with a number of roles and a long experience in entrepreneurship and regional development. And Professor Jauke Van Dijk, Professor of Regional Market Analysis and Chair Department of Economic Geography in Groningen, who are going to follow in the same structures, where we're going to have a short presentation by our two speakers. I would invite the audience to continue using the Q&A for questions and the chat for sharing. And then we're going to try and draw connections and see how we are in this sort of not one size fits all, but how we actually see some international trends from which we can learn, but also the local instantiations that are really so important. And what is the role of our respective institutions in our ecosystems for providing more opportunities to all our students. So Art, if I can turn to you first for your presentation and then I will give the floor to Jauke. So Art, over to you. Thank you very much. And good afternoon to all of you. And as Joe just stated, I'm a private consultant, private businessman, that's how I make my living. And the reason why Guild Network asked me to participate in this seminar is that I wrote a report about increasing the stay rate of foreign graduates in Dutch higher education five years ago. And if you are interested in that report, it was translated in English, if you are interested in that report, you can download it, the link, you can find the link in the document, which is distributed after this seminar. To start on a personal note, I graduated at Groningen University in 1987. And Jauke preferred to stay in Groningen, found a job. We are the same age. I was not that clever at that time. I had to move, there was a high youth unemployment in those years. And I had to move to Leiden in the western part of the country. And I made my career there. And Leiden at that moment was a very poor city. It was a derelict industrial city, high unemployment, a lot of poverty, poverty within the Dutch framework of course, and there was no German industries. There was a university, but the local economy had decreased dramatically, just two figures. In 1960, 36% of the population was working in the industry. In 1990, just 2% was working in the industry. So that was some kind of negative revolution. And now I'm well away in my career, I'm 65 now. Land is a fairly thriving city. About 60% of our land population has a degree of higher education, about 60%. One of the highest in the country by the way together with Groningen and Amsterdam. And what I'm going to talk about what happens in those 35 years? What happened to the city? How did the city do it? But to frame the actual position of the city a little more, about 30%, 31, 32% of the working population in the city at this moment has an international background. And that's 30, 32%, about half is what we call a migrant worker. Part of them are living for a long time in the country already. They are from Mediterranean sense. Another part of them are coming to the country right now from Eastern European descent. So about half. The other half is what we call knowledge workers. They are from all over the world. And that part is increasing fast. So we are used to be an international city. It's not only a question of international student population, it's also a question of having an international working population. English is in some parts of the labor market the daily language. One of the most important things which happened last generation to the city was the founding of a science park. The science park is, English is a daily language even for Dutch citizens. Even if 10 Dutch citizens are convening, they are using English as a daily language. That's some consequences. We have a lot of internationals, but they also leave. The leafiest two speakers were very clear in attracting foreign knowledge workers, but they leave. And in this moment in my city, we have about 125,000 inhabitants and about 11,000, 12,000 of them leave a year. Another 12,000 or 13,000, a little bit of growing return. So pure statistically speaking, at 12 years time, we have replaced our complete population. We compare that to our neighboring city of Alphen, which is as large as an island. They took, they take 34 years to replace their total population, 34 years. So we are really a city of arrival, arrival city. We have to specialize in receiving all those internationals again and again and again and again. And to make them welcome and to get them accustomed to living in prevalence and to leave again. After three or four years, students, knowledge workers, they leave again. At this moment, our largest growing population group is Italian speaking. And personally, I expect five years time that we have a sizable Indian minority. They start to come. And it's 30% is that large, so is it small? I expect it to be in 2030, about 40%. That's my personal experience. It will be 40%. And our capital, Amsterdam, is stabilizing at about 50%. So it's not only about students, it's also about people just coming to work in our companies. And the differences between those cities of arrival and those cities of destination, as we call it, the cities where people keep living for a long time, the difference between those types of cities are large, very large. And that touches to a question about xenophobic responsive population in the previous conversation. And we'll come back to that just in a few minutes. So what made this transformation of the city tick? And now I'm going to give a short series of five, five factors, five factors, which contributed to those spectacular comeback of the city. The first one is that we had an academic institution. We had a university and we built more education institutions upon that foundation. And you need laboratories, you need higher education, you need private campuses, everything is all fine, but you need some kind to, as a spark, a spark, but that's not enough. You have to attract young people, young people who want to study in the institutions, but it's not only about studying, it's also about forming yourself, developing yourself. You arrive in such a city when you are 18 or 19, that you leave when you are 26, 27, maybe 30, and as a different person, as a person who knows himself, as a person who gained a lot of experience. And so the first one is having institutions. The second one is attracting young people. And the third one is having companies to employ those young people. My city was lucky to have a science park. It was founded in 1984. And I think you know, all of you know that this science park is one of the oldest in the continent, even. It was, the example was Boston, Boston Science Park, in the United States, Harvard. This city founded the science park, and right now it's part of the global battle against COVID and one of the vaccines was a lot of fundamentally shirts for one of those vaccines was done just one mile from the place where I'm speaking now. So you need companies. And it's not one-to-one. It's not just a company for exactly this kind of studies. Know that you need some kind of dynamics in the local economy. The fourth thing you need is conveniences, material conveniences. You need sport facilities. You need green areas. A lot of knowledge workers like to recreate themselves in the outdoors. They want good transportation, not so much transportation in the mean of cars. The procession of cars is decreasing in this city. It's decreasing. They want this kind of professionals want other kinds of transport, good air connections, but also a light rail to be quickly in other interesting cities like Lake and Amsterdam. Sports, culture, of course, you need English language material to guide them towards sports associations to the cultural conveniences. It's not only a matter of having the conveniences, but also to make them accessible. And the fifth factor you need to be successful as a knowledge hub is what I call immaterial conveniences, the values of a knowledge hub. You should need a room for experiments, even experiments in spatial planning, which is difficult in a very crowded city like mine. You need space where the people live and are looking for some time in this city are able to put their own mark on their environments. For example, my neighbouring, the one living next to me, she's from Australian descent. She's even on the bail list of the University of Melbourne. And she, apart from COVID, she traveled three or four times a year to Melbourne and she was one of the, she took the initiative to develop a neighbourhood garden. And luckily we had some space for her to take that initiative. And in my own observation, this fifth factor is getting more and more important. Just to give you one example, a few years ago there was Amsterdam, street harassment against some homosexuals. The next two years, Amsterdam was much less popular with internationals as before. Just a few tiny incidents of sexual harassment against homosexuals was very costly in the international reputation of the city. So that makes the question of public support for being a knowledge hub all the more urgent and important. And you need all these five factors. If just one example in the southern part of our country, Maastricht is situated, it's a beautiful city with a young university. But the people there, the people of the city, they have their own, let's say, conservative culture, original culture. It's difficult to connect to that. And they don't come to the foreign students and say, welcome in our city. And even that symbolic act is important to hear that you are actually welcome in the city. And that's very costly for Maastricht because the students leave again after their studies. So it's really a combination of all those five factors. And if you have combined those five factors, you have a motor, really a motor. It's very difficult to stop that motor. But there is a gloomy side we also had to talk about. I talked about our name in the city of Alphen. It takes 34 years to replace its population statistically. In the land, it takes 12 years. We have all the cities which are looking more and more similar to each other. We exchange a lot of students and knowledge workers with Amsterdam, with Leuven in Belgium, with Oxford, with Milano. Of course, we have our own network, not the guild network. We have a Lerun network. A lot of people from our Lerun partners are living here. They come and go, they leave after a few years. Other people come here. Lots of people of my city are going to those cities. And this archipelago of Knowledge Hubs has been called already a new Asiatic League. I suppose you're familiar with your old Asiatic League, a union of cities across the continent, trading with each other, exchanging information with each other, exchanging people with each other, exchanging information. It was really already a knowledge society, information society, apart from a national state. And now we see the same rising. We see a network of cities. And we can talk about Finnish, Lithuanian, Dutch examples. I'm sure some people in this group of participants will travel to a lot of those new Asiatic cities. And it has become a archipelago of cities who are thriving, who are developing a urban lifestyle. And that's fine, we are earning a lot of money. And it's a very exciting lifestyle, but we pay a price. And the price is the difference, the shift we have between our cities and the other parts of the country. I heard the word xenophobic. I can add to the words populist. The populist part of the electorate is not living in these cities. It's living in the countryside. And they're getting poorer. Their life expectancy is decreasing. They have another political outlook. And that's my concern. So in my career time, since 1987, I saw the rise of a beautiful fleet of knowledge hubs. And they will develop into the future as one new international urban lifestyle and one international knowledge-based economy. But we cannot get ourselves lost from the surrounding countryside. And that's my concern as a citizen of this country. Two thirds of a population is not participating in our knowledge economy. And I say two thirds, it's about 55% at this moment. It's decreasing, by the way, but still a large part of our population is not participating in our knowledge economy. And then we get Joe, you and your country had the Brexit. The Americans had the Trump. We have a populist, large populist groups in our parliament. So social cohesion of our societies should be concerned also for leading spokesmen in the knowledge hubs. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Art. And thank you for really raising a issues that we really need to revisit. And I'm going to pass on to Jacke, but I think we really need to make sure that we come back to the role of the university. So if you talked about the five factors, how much is the role of the university to actually create pathways between those factors to actually become an enabler in allowing to actually bringing the sort of this, you call it a matter of transformation and change. How much is the role of the university there? And really we already have some questions on the role of English and how this kind of we talk about global local levels. We can talk about global local languages, the importance of what we see in terms of keeping local languages, identities connecting with the global languages and the sort of different set of opportunities that you mentioned. It would be really good to come back and talk a little bit more about the profile of the graduate that you mentioned work in English and how much weather and whether you actually see some of those divides that we have a knowledge economy that is booming, but there are other parts of society that don't relate to it. What is our role? And as the political environment is changing, how can we maintain these principles and ideals of our campuses being open, liberal, inclusive and providing opportunity for all? So very important questions that I know Jaoke is also touching upon. So I'm just acknowledging the questions we had and the need to discuss and to revisit. And I'm going to pass on to Jaoke to continue really this so important and fascinating conversation that we have today. Jaoke, how about you? Okay, thank you very much. It's a great pleasure for me to say something about the position of the University of Groningen in the North of the Netherlands. Just like art, I studied in Groningen, economics instead of sociology, but I stayed there for my whole life. I was born in a neighboring province of Friesland, but then I studied there. I did my PhD work in the economics department and then switched to the geography department, but I'm still there close to retirement. So it's a great pleasure for me to tell you something about the specific situation of the University of Groningen. The outline is, yeah, I will tell you something about the economic setting, the regional labor market situation, and then I will move to the student mobility in the University of Groningen and the position of the international students versus the national students. And I will tell you something about the policy initiatives in Groningen. Now, Groningen, the Netherlands is a small country. It's a little bit far away from Estonia and Finland, which are close to each other. And it's a small country because the distance between the South and the North is only 300 kilometers. Groningen is located here in the North and the distance to Amsterdam, where the major airport is, is only 200 kilometers. So it's very, very small. 70 million inhabitants, there's a little bit more of Finland. So the population density is quite high. Now, the city of Groningen, located in the North, it's a city with a very old history. It's existed since 1040. It's the Költern Economic Capital of the North, two hours by train from Skippel Airport and there's every half hour a train. So it's easy to reach. It's a university city, 220,000 inhabitants, but 50% of the population is younger than 35. There are 66,000 students at the university and also at Hansa University of Applied Sciences. So it's a very young city. It has a lively and cosmopolitan atmosphere. And if you are there as a visitor, it's very easy to get around because everyone speaks English. The university is also quite old, founded in 1614. It has about 140,000 alumni. It's a research university doing very well in the international rankings. And recently we even had a Nobel Prize winner, Ben Ferenka, in chemistry. The number of students is 35,000, 34,000. 120 nationalities, 6,000 staff and the number of international students is 8,400. That's 24% of the total. And we have many English courses, 120 masters and 35 bachelor programs. And also the PhDs are very international. More than half of them is from abroad. The university has explicit policy of recognize differences in talent and ambition and to stimulate cross-border research and education. Now, what's the regional setting? Of course, just like all the other countries, we have the COVID problem, which is a deep, which causes a deep change in GDP, but also a very quick recovery afterwards. Now we are again in a complicated situation, but the economy is affected in certain sectors like restaurants, but also in many sectors like the university, the effects are quite small. And the result is what you see in this diagram in 2013, 2014, the number of unemployed was much higher than the number of open vacancies. But just before COVID started, it was almost equal. And now we had a change, a little bit increase in unemployment, but now the number of vacancies is higher than the number of unemployed. So there is really a problem in the labor market and we expect that this will continue because of the demographic situation of more aging. Now that means that there is a war for talent. And when we look at the probabilities of academic graduates to find a job, there is hardly any negative effect of the pandemic, but they find a job very, very easy. So there is really this war for talent. Labor shortages are everywhere in the province of Groningen, a little less than in other parts of the country, and the dark blue is the most hit. But also in Groningen, the number of unemployed is very close to the number of vacancies. And for higher educated, the labor market situation is very, very prosperous. It's very easy to get it. And you see there are many newspaper articles and they all say, okay, we need people. Where do we find people? That's the biggest problem now in the regional economy, but also in the national economy. Now then turning to student mobility at the University of Groningen. When you look at the migration patterns to the university, this is a very typical graph. You see that people are coming in from the age 15 to 16, and then there is a peak, and then you see that people leave. So first they come in and after the graduation, many of them leave. And if you look at the map where they come from, this map is very clear. They are recruited mainly from the blue parts. So that's the northern region and from far away. And after graduation, part of them stay very close to the city of Groningen, and others move to the rest of the country, mainly to the big cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, especially Amsterdam is very attractive. So we call that a so-called escalator model. The rural areas, the smart and the ambitious young people are attracted to the city and often in the city of Groningen. And then afterwards there is a redistribution, and the redistribution is in the region, the talents concentrate in the city of Groningen, and there is a redistribution over the country. And an important question is of course, is there a brain drain? Now, policymakers are very worried about this. They try to stop the escalator to the run-stop area. Now, is there really a brain drain? First of all, it's very important to know that most graduates from universities which are born in the Netherlands go to the University of Groningen, and if they don't go there, they go to technical universities in the other part of the country. But it's also very important to know that half of the students at the University of Groningen comes from outside the northern region, from outside the three northern provinces. So it attracts also a lot of students. And after graduation, a substantial part moves. It's also about half. So in the beginning, the brain drain is a little less, but after four to six years, more and more graduates are leaving. And there is a clear distinction between those with Nordic roots, they stay more than people who originate from outside. Now, this is a very typical pattern which we discovered using micro data where we can follow career patterns. What you see is the city of Groningen, people are coming in. And then even before graduation, the first already leave to somewhere else and this continues after graduation. When you compare this with Amsterdam, you see that Amsterdam attracts a lot of graduates, but after graduation, this continues. So after graduation, the year of graduation, Amsterdam more and more attracts students from other universities. Why do they leave Groningen? Mainly because of career opportunities. And the second one is the partner when the partner finds a job somewhere else, also the other person moves. So these are the main motives to leave Groningen. Now, then the international students, Groningen attracts quite a high number of international students, 80,000, 400, 300. The University of Amsterdam has some more, but also the University of Maastricht in the South. And it increases substantially. Compared to 2006, the number of international students increased from 50,000 to 70,000. So just like in Estonia, the numbers increased. Now, where do the students and the international students at the University of Groningen come from? Mainly from Germany. One out of three comes from Germany. And after that, we see Romania, Italy, Bulgaria, Great Britain, China. But mainly these are European countries, but mainly from Germany, our neighboring country. And you see the same in Maastricht. Most of the students in Maastricht, they come from Germany. So they come from a broad range of countries, but Germany is by far the main source. Now, what's the labor market situation of the international students after graduation? First of all, we only have very limited and scarce information, but we know some figures that about 25% of the students, they live in Groningen after graduation and they continue, but mainly they go to Amsterdam. Only 3% is still in Groningen. So if the international students stay in the Netherlands and the percentage is much lower than I saw for Finland, then they hardly stay in the Groningen. Why? I think the career opportunities and the labor market situation is quite important. In the North, there are mainly small and medium-sized firms with limited career opportunities. And as a means, they hesitate to hire international students because on the workflow, they speak Dutch. That's a problem. At the university, it's no problem. We have a lot of international people. All the meetings on my department are in English, but smaller firms, then the language becomes the problem and the students don't face it during their study because the program is in English. If you live in the city of Groningen, English is no problem at all. In shops, in restaurants, everyone speaks it, but in small and medium-sized firms, then you have a problem. Now, given the expected shortage of labor, more and more talent policies are developed, but there is also a lot to win at the national market. As you saw, also 50% of the students from the rest of the Netherlands who come to Groningen, they leave. So international students, they are, it's only more difficult than to retain national students. Now, there are a substantial number of policies for internationals. For instance, the university pays for Dutch courses if they want to do it. There is an international welcome center which really helps you if you arrive with a one-stop shop for international people. They help you. There are facilities for talent if you want to start up your own business. There is also an income tax subsidy substantial. You have a reduction of 30% on your income tax during the first five years for employees who are recruited from abroad. And this is a substantial discount. There's a campus ecosystem for facilitating graduates and startups, career services. Students can get advice of their career opportunities before, during, and after they graduate. So there is really a lot of policy to stimulate talent and try to keep them. We have a special program for female students, the Rosalind Franklin fellowships. There is support for a helping department because a lot of international staff, they come with their spouse or with their husband and they also need a job. The university tries to help them. There is an international school for children of international staff. So that's not really the problem. There is even a newspaper, The Northern Times with news in English. The main problem is the small and medium sized firms and that you need Dutch to function on the work floor in these firms. Now, the university pays the Dutch courses that are websites with this information, the International Wellcome Center, easy accessible information. Make it in the north. Do you want to start up your business? A lot of information and the people are willing to help you. Career Services also websites with a lot of information and a substantial number of staff really help the graduates and staff members. What is my conclusion? Kroningen, it's a regional capital, 200 kilometers from Amsterdam, 200,000 inhabitants with lots and lots of students, which makes it a very easy to live city for international students. It's many English courses. We have a Nobel Prize winners international PhDs. In this respect, Kroningen is very attractive. We also have a lot of vacancies. There is a war for talent, but mainly the problem now is for policy to attract more Dutch students. Of course, international students are welcome, but the university produces a lot of graduates which have been in Kroningen. They like the city, but there should be job opportunities and also a career perspective. That's the main issue. Until now, policies are there. They are employed with a substantial amount of money, but the success is not very clear because it's not monitored very clearly. And there is the divide. Do we want to focus on international students? Of course we would like to do that. But there is also still a lot of work to do in keeping more nationals. And maybe the university should think, okay, knowledge graduates are also a very clean passport problem. Do you talk about brain drain? Of course, if they want to stay, they're welcome. But on the other hand, it's good for the local economy, for the regional economy, that we have more students than we can employ because it gives a lot of high quality jobs and a lot of expenditures, which are very good for the local economy. That's my story. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jauke. A number of questions we already have. So I will start addressing them. Can I just ask as a sort of clarification question? Some years ago, I had looked into small-medium enterprises in the UK, and I was quite interested in the pattern of employing international students as part of internationalisation strategies. So small-medium enterprises wishing to go international and fishing into the sort of the pool of the language and cultural understanding, cultural use very broadly here, in actually accessing possible markers or establishing connections and kind of bringing diversification into the staff. Is there something that you see? Because in a sense, I was quite interested that you both touched on English and we'll come to that because that's one of the first questions. But is that trend also something that you see in the data or there is an increase to actually pool into the capital of the international students? Yes, I think that there is a big divide. Most of the small companies, they are not that much interested in international students. But there is a smaller amount, for instance, than ICT services. They welcome international students, but they easily switch to English. It depends also on the average age of the workers. If the employees are young, English is not a big problem. But the majority of the firms, they are very reluctant to hire international students. There is a small group of front-runners. OK. Art, can I also turn to you to clarify a question which you mentioned about graduates mostly working in English? And is there a change over time? Or do you see a change between those graduates who work in English and then as they sort of become settled, if you want, although I don't really like this term, but decide to stay, you actually see a shift in terms of the language repertoire. Or you also see those graduates that you had in mind in your presentation moving on and creating that sort of flow. Could you elaborate a bit on that? Well, if you had asked me 10 years ago if an international coming to an ambulance should learn Dutch, to stay here, I would say, without any doubt, yes, he should. But right now, I'm not any more sure about that. And that has to do with a growing number of companies. I listened to Janker. There might be a regional difference. Of course, we're close to his airport. We're close to the Hague. We're close to Amsterdam. But we have a substantial amount of English using offices and companies here in the city. Also in the small and medium enterprises. And what I noticed is that even the primary education and even the preschools are not trying to put Dutch at the first language. They are just accepting the language with which children start. Let them first speak their own language. Very good. And afterwards we're going to learn another language. I heard about a Portuguese boy, a Portuguese boy, age 10 years old. And he had to learn Dutch as a fifth language. Imagine 10 years old, be fluent already in four languages, that kind of population. So I'm not sure about should you really learn Dutch? Yes, you should learn Dutch for social life. Not so much more for the labor market, which is internationalizing quite fast. Also in medium-skilled professions like the hospitality industry. But for social life, to get into social life, in personal life with Dutchmen, Dutchmen tend to be quite conservative. And in personal life, they prefer Dutch. So that's a battle we still have to fight. Keep also talking English in the houses. So I'm not sure about your question about the weight of the national language anymore. It's developing quite fast. Maybe I can add a little to that. I agree with Art that Dutch for social, it's important. That's why the staff in my department, I advise them that they can understand Dutch and read Dutch. If they speak Dutch, it's no problem. But especially in social life, that they like that they can speak Dutch. So if the other understand it, that's already a good first step. Maybe we just want a tiny joke about it. I told you that I'm giving in my private consultancy and the masterclass is about urban development. And sometimes I have an English speaker and he starts to use Dutch language and he starts to ask his question in English. And after half an hour, someone notices, why are we still talking English? So that's how common English, usually English language is becoming. Thank you very much, Berks. I mean, I'm trying very hard to resist because you are getting into language ideology, which is very close to my heart and to my research as well. So I'm just sort of trying to resist the temptation of making that connection with the politics of language, the politics of identity. And again, where you actually see shifts and trends, which is really very important. But I want to make sure that we also address questions. And maybe we can take this a little bit further by addressing a question we had to you, Art. And the question is around, are the national program making the Netherlands? And Blauberg, our colleague is asking, said that Netherlands should start from a regional approach. And also said that both education, in both education and the labor market, a regional approach is key. Which are the recent developments and how does this interface with a conversation we had about the sort of the shift and the changes that you're noticing? Well, I didn't have the time as a private consultant to go in depth in what happened since I wrote that report. If you wanted to read the report, that's possible, of course. But I heard a lot of very familiar initiatives from Finness France, from Jauke. I think that's about how things work. But I want to say two more things. The first one is, I think this is not only about language ideology. Knowledge economy is also about developing a new identity. The identity of those new, ansiatic cities. And that has, of course, some political aspects to it. And we are really, that's how I experienced it by 65th year. We are developing a new lifestyle. And we have to think about welcoming, about solidarity, about picking up less educated, less privileged people into our mainstream, high-developed economies in those knowledge hubs. We are really developing a new lifestyle. And then adding to that, what's the role of the university? I want the university to be part of the regional ecosystem. You cannot, by a scissor, knife out what should the municipality do, what should the national government do? I'll give you a very practical example. During the COVID lockdown, the students had a very difficult time to find a workplace, just a workplace, because of the one and a half meter prescription. And I was involved in an initiative to develop accessibility of Adurone. Adurone, the internet program for safe access to internet by the educational community. And we are not fully covered in this city by Adurone. And I started to, I was asked by some business firms to approach the university to make the development of Adurone faster. It was not understood by the university authorities. It was not understood by the municipal authorities. So we had to put Adurone in hotel lobbies, not only in university buildings, also in hotel lobbies, in neighborhood houses, in public parks where students were studying. And it was initially, it was not understood, neither by the university nor by the municipality. So now two years, you can say two days, well, it takes time. Now we are in a large offensive to bring Adurone to the whole of the city. And that's another signal that the university is still too far from the regional ecosystem. But this is between the university on the one hand and municipality and the local business life and the local population should decrease ever, ever more. Thank you so much for that. In Groningen, we really try to do that. The university now established the initiative of the University of the North, where they work together with the applied universities, also in the neighboring province. They established a branch plant in the province of Friesland and really try to make campuses also with the industry. I think that's really a switch of the university now to really be aware of the problems in the North and try to help the local businesses and be aware of the social problems that Art mentioned. I think that that's really a shift. Yeah. Thank you so much, Jakku, and both of you for raising that. I think we should definitely stay here for another two hours and discuss this because you are kind of really getting into the heart of how when there is so much talk about universities and the role in the regional ecosystem, this concept of the global civic university, how do we actually see that? Is the university, can we do this? Have we seen that there is a change? Where do you actually see the potential that there is so much emphasis from policymakers asking universities to establish alternative pathways alongside traditional degrees, but you both referred to rigid structures and Jakku, you just sort of referred now to initiatives. Can you say a little bit more? Do you see a sort of COVID being an accelerant and the disruption? Do you see something there that we can capitalize in enabling more dynamic, more flexible sort of ecosystems or pathways into those ecosystems? Can you say a little bit more, Jakku, on that? Yeah, I think these ecosystems are very important but it's not already before COVID because the university really had the idea we can be more beneficial for the region in terms of innovation than there should be the connection between the policymakers and also between the firms, also small and medium-sized firms that you really connect to them. And the university now realizes that they have to play an active role because the companies are not easy going to the university especially not a small one. You have to come to them. I think that's a major change now and the university takes this responsibility now very, very seriously. I have two more to kind of press on the Groeningen case and there are two questions, they're big so you can synthesize them. One is on the five factors that are presented as the sort of motor. I really liked the concept of those factors that need to come together to create this transformational power. Which ones you don't see in the city of Groeningen and that could be related to international students not staying as long as they could or there would be the aspiration in the region. So that's one part. And the other part that I want to bring in because an important question is the incentives. So OECD in the past, our colleague is asking, recommended Netherlands to consider lower salary criteria or other incentives for international graduates and knowledge workers wishing to target top sectors or more remote regions outside big cities. Which are the biggest developments in smaller cities like Groeningen or also if I start with you, Jarek and then Art, if you want to answer that. Yeah, the biggest challenges I think for the north of the Netherlands is to be much more connected to the Randstad area. There have been reports by OECD that the Netherlands should not focus only on the Randstad area because there are also negative effects for instance, with COVID we recognize this but also in terms of pollution. So the functional economic areas including the north should be more connected. Therefore there is now the idea to have a high speed train from Amsterdam to Groeningen. That solves part of the problems also for the higher educated of their career patterns and jobs for the partners. So this connection needs to be increased. And I think that's a major challenge and there are now concrete plans how to do it. Art? Well, in the previous talk it was said already we are living in an aging continent. And in a few decades we are living on an aging planet. And we are in transformation time. There's still a lot of purchasing power with the baby boomers. So they keep on putting economic pressure but they are stopping to work. So we have to produce a lot of services for a large population with less and less workers. And so we need immigration. We need immigration but not only immigration we need to prepare for a lot of transformations. Climate transformation, demographic transformation is not only arriving seven from abroad. It's also developing international networks to be prepared for all those transformations. Internationalizing is not only about the labor market not only about the economy. It's also about a sustainable future. I'm convinced of that. And we have a problem as you asked should lower salary demands be an idea for internationals coming into the country? We have a problem with national policies. Immigration as we are now talking from the guild network with each other we it's easy to agree with each other but in our national parliament immigration is a hot topic. And it's a lot of there's a burden on the national population with accepting all those migration some kind of left behind spirits in some parts of the country. Everybody's developing and I'm staying behind and that's some kind of social unrest maybe even a source of political instability. So we are not free as cities to have our own migration policies. We have to develop that in the framework of our nation state. Just one final remark. It is not only about knowledge workers. I have my own building and it's a complicated building. It's a monument. So I need a lot of maintenance and after a week there is a carpenter or a painter or whatever a plumber and I have to use all my language skills to communicate with them. They are Polish, they are Arab. We use German, we use English to communicate. We never use Dutch language anymore. So it's not only the high skilled worker it's also the Polish family who came to the city on a seasonal basis for picking fruits and after five years decides to stay here and then going to our institution of higher education and after 10 years starting their own business. It's not only the population we have within the university it is the broader movement of internationalisation. So just to wrap up and I think you touched upon we spent quite a lot of time given the framing in terms of the synchrony what is the relationship in the immediate but of course the role of the university is the future is to prepare the citizens of the future to prepare and provide the space we need for our students to address the complex problems and also of course that to connect with the communities around the universities and universities are not in one size fits all. We're not a homogeneous. Where do you see in closing this conversation where do you see the priorities that from your respective ends we would need to address very briefly in terms of being able to achieve all those that we need to achieve and the opportunity to bring transformational change in the current political and economic environment. So a closing very brief statement. Yeah, I think that's indeed a big challenge. Of course we need more internationalisation but as Art already said it's not a solution that all people come to the Netherlands to solve our problems. We also have to find new ways of organising things, innovation because knowledge needs also to be spread to other countries. We already see that people from Poland they are not working here longer because they go back to Poland because the economy in Poland is also increasing and they need more and more people. So it's the combination of having an international society and combination with also innovative new ideas to survive for the future with these challenges with regard to the health situation and the energy transition. Thank you very much, yeah, okay. Art's final word. Well, it's a very unquiet climate we have. In the corona, in the COVID crisis we don't have a cabinet as you know, a legal cabinet and they're talking about a new cabinet and then we are talking about great transformations in our society and in our ecosystems. What we need from universities is civil leadership. Really, we need civil leadership and not only leadership by the boards of university we also need civil leadership by individual intellectuals. You are well educated. We have an international outlook. Put that outlook at work in your own city. We need civil leadership and social connection from our intellectual staff in the university. That's what we need. Thank you both. Absolutely fascinating. I really wish we had more time but we already I think raised the issues that provide challenges but also provide opportunities to really for the future of the university to reimagine the role we can play and how we could provide opportunities for the region nationally and internationally. Jan, if I pass on to you to really close this absolutely fascinating conversation. Thank you, Joe. I won't attempt to really summarize the entire seminar today because I think that would be in videos but I just maybe highlight the kinds of things that have been particularly memorable to me. So we started out. So first of all, I just wanted to connect it to again the wider project of what we worked on for a long time and where we learned a lot, I should say, from the University of Tartu. So it's not just that Estonia learns from others but we have learned a lot from Estonia and because of this project in really thinking about how universities need to reimagine education and how they need to really assert the kind of leadership that you ended with in and through education. And I think we heard really around, first from Estonia but then also from Finland about the really importance, the national importance attached to integrating overseas and foreign international students. And what we heard was not just that they're a really important part of the labor force but also about a number of ideas about how to do that well. And I think one thing that really stands out is really this integrated approach, the way that you do not create things that are necessary special for them but you really, really work hard and really try to integrate them and be inclusive to them but also listening to their particular needs and backgrounds all the way through the curriculum, through the internship opportunities, through the support you give them also in terms of the language. It seems to me the language is secondly, has been a really important catalyst running throughout I think the seminar that incends language as a key critical issue that decides on how well you integrate the students and what kind of experience they are going to have. And I think that's also, that's not discounted by Annabelle by your points that you made towards the end where you said, well, you're not quite sure whether they do need to learn Dutch but that also I think speaks to the kind of international experience that they have. So I think again, really language has been really absolutely critical. I think that then one of the things that has also been really important is what happens outside the university and the welcome culture that we can provide. I thought the example of Master's was really interesting. I'm sure it comes from many, many places around Europe that in a sense the welcome culture that communities then presents to international graduates is absolutely essential for the ways in which they want to integrate great and the way they want to change. And I think there's a real danger here about a kind of catch 22 because in a sense if these communities don't welcome these graduates then they won't go somewhere else. So then the divide is going to increase even more. So it's going to be even harder to create these kinds of welcome culture. And I think that poses an essential role for all of us in universities going back to the civil leadership that you mentioned because our universities are all around Europe and so we really do need to work in and through all of our communities. And we heard from the University of Groningen, Yauke really importantly how I think Groningen is taking that regional mission very, very seriously indeed. And really I just want to end with this really important point as you've really challenged us to think about the international, the national, the regional and this Hanziatic League of Knowledge as it were and the thinking about the ways in which the international dimension, the integration of international students can also reinforce the national and the international divides of communities within a country. That is something I think that we really need to take really seriously. And it goes back to this question about how we best then integrate students and make sure that all parts of the country and all parts of our communities can really benefit from these students and these students in turn can benefit from all parts of our countries. So finally, I mean to try and sum up my thoughts really I think to my mind that ultimately it just shows that internationalization is ultimately really about our identity as universities. It's about our ambition to be excellent at all the levels and supporting students however we can. It's about our commitment to the community and to the region and it is about our commitment to an excellent education and to be the international institutions that we are and thinking that through right across the board. And Anna with this, thank you. Thank you, back to you. Thank you. Thank you so much to all of you where speaking and actively asking questions and engaging to that discussion. I'll just say two sentences to the end in order to finish sharply because people are leaving already because it's the end of the day. I just wanted to say that if people are coming to the university they do have some hopes and maybe interest they want to study and finally they get much more from the university. And I would say the majority of our international students coming to Estonia to study in our university and in the other universities, they know quite a little about Estonia and they don't have, I mean, many of them don't have any plans to stay here but during the two years mostly they study for the master's degree for two years they come to love Estonia and Tato. You imagine we have snow. Many of them haven't seen snow before and so anyway we have snow already now. And I came to this seminar with the very simple small questions what we as a university should do more and better in order to engage our international students. But I'm leaving from here with the wider ideas of exactly what you answered about this network of knowledge cities, new Hanseatic League. In Estonia we have four Hanseatic cities and in all of them we have our university campuses. It's Tato, it's Tallinn, it's Perno and Dillandi so we have the big ambition to be part of it and thank you. And I mean, I'm really thankful for this lessons I even didn't know I'm getting today.