Cheap and effective
The Ministry of Education scholarship programmes as a part of Finland’s cultural relations overseas in post-war decades
Abstract
The article deals with international scholarship programmes and the role of the Ministry of Education in the post-war internationalization of Finland. In the decades following World War II, the mobility of people increased significantly, intertwining with expanding higher education. In this article, we examine the development of Finnish student exchange programmes in the framework of the Cold War, especially from the perspective of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Very little research has been done on Finland's role and position in growing international mobility and especially in international scholarship programmes. In Finland, in the late 1950s the Ministry of Education became a key player in the organization of these international exchanges – although it was never the only one. We look at how the Ministry of Education conceived and developed its role in this area of cultural diplomacy, which in Finland had traditionally been under the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Commercial and organizational scholarship programmes are excluded from the review.The article is based on material collected from the archives of the Ministry of Education and the National Archives, as well as a few other archives over several decades. Letter material, memos, and meeting minutes are included. The aim is to create a picture of the decades when educational exchanges started and expanded, practically from the second half of the 1940s to the 1975 CSCE conference, from which point onwards the exchanges expanded strongly and became the responsibility of the Ministry of Education.
Keywords: international exchange programmes, university, Ministry of Education, Cold War
