XAMK free courses may start charging

I have taken quite a few courses from XAMK in Finland and feel they are excellent . I see other posters here have too. I received an email from them "The new Finnish government is under pressure to make public spending cuts. The Finnish education system, fully funded by public funds, is now facing significant and unfortunate negative impacts from the new government policies. This includes the Finnish Open University system, of which the IVGC course is a part, funded by the Finnish government through XAMK’s educational programs. These policy changes are not made or decided by XAMK University." 2024 In the worst case, if we must charge for each future credit you study, it would start sometime in January/February.
For students in the game creation program they advise do as many free courses as you can now before the deadline.
I hope it remains free as I enjoy the nursing courses.

 

I wonder if they will remain free?

 

My take: they certainly won't, in the long run. Finland's problems won't go away overnight, nor will anyone else's.
I hope the charges will be light hits on the wallet - not "killer" charges, amplified many times for foreigners. Either way would not surprise me. I do NOT believe Finland should EVER have made a program like this free for people in developed countries outside the EU.

Not financially prudent. Took them a long time to find that out. Now they have to fix it.

 

Good news! I was notified that the video game creation courses have been kept free for another year and I was able to enroll for 2 courses free (10 ECTS) for the next semester starting 1-16-2024 so the free courses in the Open University appear to be staying for for now.