Statistics Finland

Statistics Finland has collected student and degree data through education providers directly from educational institutions, the Koski database, the national data warehouse for higher education (VIRTA) and the matriculation examination register.

Statistics Finland maintains a qualification register of the degree data it collects. Statistics Finland combines this qualification register data with, for example, population data provided to it by the Digital and Population Data Services Agency and data from its own employment register.

The population of the employment register is the population permanently residing in the country on the last day of the year. The data are mainly derived from administrative registers and statistical data files.

Some of Statistics Finland’s data are based on combining the aforementioned personal data and registers. Such data can be used to review, for example, pass rates in education (study progress), dropping out of education or placement of graduates in the world of work.

Additionally, Statistics Finland has regularly collected data on teachers in basic and secondary education as well as liberal adult education and basic education in the arts.

Finnish National Agency for Education

The Finnish National Agency for Education collects from education providers the cost and operational data on which the central government transfer for primary and secondary education is based, with the exception of the cost data for municipalities’ pre-primary and basic education and general upper secondary education, which are collected by the State Treasury.

The Finnish National Agency for Education maintains the national database for teaching and education (Koski), the student selection register (post-basic education and higher education) and the early childhood education data warehouse (Varda), whose data are used in statistics. Koski contains the data on the personal competence development plan (eHOKS) for vocational education and training students recorded in the register.

The Finnish National Agency for Education collects data on students’ international mobility periods from higher education institutions.

​Ministry of Education and Culture

The Ministry of Education and Culture collects data on the operations, personnel and economic activities of universities of applied sciences and universities.

The reports utilise data collected from the VIRTA higher education achievement register and the VIRTA publication information service.

The Oiva steering and regulation service of the Finnish National Agency for Education contains data on education providers’ organisation and maintenance authorisations at different levels of education.

​Others

The Matriculation Examination Board collects the matriculation examination grades.

The Finnish National Agency for Education’s education management information service Arvo collects data on career monitoring, student feedback and employer feedback.

Other sources of data used in Vipunen include the Business Information System (BIS), ETER (European Tertiary Education Register), OECD, Web of Science (bibliometrics), Scopus (bibliometrics), CORDIS (European Commission).