Financing and Administration

Parliament passes legislation concerning adult education and training and decides on the resources allocated to it in the state budget. The Ministry of Education prepares legislation and government resolutions concerning education and culture and steers activities in its sector.

The Ministry has the overall responsibility for education policy and for self-motivated adult education. In Finland adult education is seen to comprise self-motivated studies, labour market training and in-service training.

The Ministry of Education is responsible for self-motivated education and the labour administration for labour market training geared to enhance the operation of the labour market and to reduce unemployment. The aims of in-service training, which is mainly purchased by companies and public sector organisations, relate to business economics and productivity.

Adult education organisations are run by the government, local authorities, municipal consortia, private associations, foundations and companies. Education and training leading to qualifications is financed by the public administration, except university degree education, which is totally government-financed. Training leading to further and specialist qualifications is mostly publicly funded but may charge moderate fees.

About half of liberal adult education costs are covered by the government and the rest mostly comes from student fees and from the maintaining organisations. The purpose of state funding is to guarantee the largest possible provision without burdening the students with high fees. Adult education and training receives 12-13% of the appropriations allocated through the Ministry of Education main class in the state budget. Almost half of this funding is channelled to vocational training and one fifth to liberal education.

Employers purchase staff-development training from adult education institutions and firms. The labour administration also purchases a great deal of different training for unemployed people and for those at risk of unemployment.