Release Free for publication on 11 February 2021 This year marks the 100th anniversary of the National Union of University Students in Finland! Come and celebrate SYL’s centenary and the student movement! SYL’s 100th anniversary will be a celebration for all students. Students helped to make Finland the modern welfare society it is today. For … Read more
SYL’s 100th anniversary will be a celebration for all students. Nothing brings the youth of today and of yesteryear together quite like their shared experiences as students. For this reason, SYL will launch a campaign to collect student memories in February, culminating in the week of Vappu (May Day). Memories will be collected using the … Read more
2021 is already a historic year for the student movement, for better or worse. This year marks the 100th anniversary of SYL, and now is a good time to both stop to admire SYL’s past achievements and start looking for the future direction of the student movement. Internationalization and mobility have always been close to our … Read more
Ever since it was founded, SYL has looked after the interests of students in Finland, but it was only later that SYL’s role as an advocacy organisation was strengthened. Alumni describe how SYL has carried out its advocacy work over the decades and how changes in politics have affected SYL’s operations. The 1950s and 1960s: … Read more
Membership of the European Union significantly changed SYL’s operating environment, but what were its international operations like before then? Our alumni tell us how international student movement networks have changed along the years. Finnish student unions decided to organize in 1921. The National Union of University Students in Finland was founded to enable student unions … Read more
In November 2016, the General Assembly of National Union of University Students in Finland decided to declare SYL a feminist organization. In his open letter on the debate about the decision, the then President, Heikki Koponen, stated that “As a feminist organization, SYL will promote the equal treatment of people of all genders.” Promoting gender … Read more
Student financial aid, a hard-won benefit for students, is perhaps one of the best-known types of student income. The history of students’ social benefits shows how ideal solutions for student livelihoods have varied over time. In 1948, a system of higher education scholarships was introduced, which offered either full or partial scholarships, or allowances for … Read more
Dear reader, SYL was founded 97 years ago to take care of Finnish university students’ international relations. For decades, SYL representatives were responsible for international relations at, for example, the Versailles Peace Negotiations, to which Finland could not send an official observer due to having lost the war. Balancing between the propaganda machines of the … Read more
During the last few weeks, we have celebrated a reform that expands the services of the Finnish Student Health Service (FSHS) to all university students. This is significant, because the status of the FSHS has needed defending from the student movement throughout its decades-long trajectory. The SYL alumni from various decades recall this trajectory. First … Read more