A joint information resource for degrees and credits of Finland’s higher education institutions

16.05.2012

Commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Culture, CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd will implement a joint information resource covering all Finnish universities and universities of applied sciences. The work will be carried out in cooperation with the authorities and the education institutions concerned. The national information resource will, for the first time, provide a reliable and electronically available overview of all degrees and credits granted by higher education institutions and other student information collected by them.

"With the joint information resource, the information contained in the student registers of higher education institutions can be used for different needs in a technologically compatible manner," explains Antti Mäki, manager of the project. The RAKETTI-VIRTA project, set up to implement the information resource, was launched by representatives of CSC, Finnish higher education institutions, Finnish National Board of Education, Statistics Finland and the Ministry of Education and Culture.

"The information resource will be available to the joint application system of higher education institutions at the start of 2014. Between June and September, the higher education institutions and other stakeholder groups will have an opportunity to give opinions about the proposal on the information content of the resource," says Mäki, explaining the project timetable.

"The project didn’t start from scratch as it is based on the information model for higher education institutions jointly developed in the RAKETTI project from 2008 and the expertise and technological infrastructure built for data storage and reporting," he adds.

The implementation of the information resource is based on the government proposal for legal amendments aimed at reforming student selection at higher education institutions, which was submitted to the Parliament on 16 May 2012. Introduction of the national information resource of higher education institutions on the basis of requirements of their new joint application system is one part of the proposal.

The aim of the RAKETTI-VIRTA project, to be implemented as part of the RAKETTI project carried out jointly by Finland’s higher education institutions and the Ministry of Education and Culture, is to implement the information resource on the basis of the new legislation and to allow Statistics Finland and the Ministry of Education and Culture to use the information collected for student selection in their own information collection work. The information stored in the resource will also be available to the higher education institutions themselves as they set up practices for such purposes as prevention of unnecessarily overlapping studies.

Further information

Antti Mäki
Project manager, RAKETTI-VIRTA
CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd
+358 50 430 9119
antti.maki (at) csc.fi

For more information about the implementation of the national information resource for higher education institutions and information flows involving authorities as part of the RAKETTI-VIRTA project, go to http://raketti.csc.fi/virta (the website is in Finnish).

Information model of higher education institutions: http://tietomalli.csc.fi/ (the website is in Finnish)