Commercial services

Profitable commercial operations

In 2017, the turnover of Haaga-Helia’s commercial functions was EUR 3.6 million, most of which was generated by education and development programmes customised for companies and institutions in Finland and abroad. The most popular paid open education included training in service design, digital competence and HRD competence. In the facility and event services, the strong demand continued. During the year, we launched system updates of the commercial functions and continued the digitalisation of services. We participated in events such as the Nordic Travel Fair, the Yritystä Stadiin networking event for entrepreneurs, the Esimies & Henkilöstö Fair on leadership and personnel and the Nordic Business Forum.

100 partners in working life cooperation

Haaga-Helia’s partnership activities continued to grow, and in December, the number of our partners exceeded 100. In the future, we will pursue more in-depth cooperation with the existing partners, instead of increasing their number. We conducted a satisfaction survey among the partner companies and will use the results to develop the partnership activities to better meet the companies’ needs. Participation from partner companies’ management was active in two events celebrating Haaga-Helia’s 10-year anniversary: a dinner in Haaga campus and a private event hosted by Patrick Lencione, a keynote speaker at the Nordic Business Forum, in Pasila campus.

 Career and Recruitment Services and alumni activities offer support to students 

In the career, recruitment and alumni services, we launched a more extensive cooperation model, which includes Haaga-Helia alumni working in partner companies, among other things. We engaged students to develop a new mentor programme for themselves.

Our register included 29,275 alumni at the end of 2017. We organised the Duuniin.net career and networking fair for the fourth time in Haaga-Helia’s facilities. A total of 82 businesses participated in the fair to recruit students. A total of 4,313 practical training and thesis work vacancies were submitted through the LAURA™ recruitment system. We continued the digitalisation of the career and recruitment services: A feature was activated in the LAURA™ system for students to save their CV in the system, and we deployed the Lyyti event management system. The career centre at Pasila campus provided career and recruitment guidance to approximately 400 students and alumni.

The eMBA programme grew and will be order-based

The turnover of Haaga-Helia’s eMBA in Service Excellence grew by nearly 10%, and the feedback received on the programme continued to be very positive. The modules led by Haaga-Helia’s teachers have been praised for their practice-oriented tools and the opportunities to network and share experiences with decision-makers. We organised an eMBA alumni meeting in Pasila campus at the end of the year. The eMBA concept will undergo changes as of autumn 2018, and the programme will be offered on an order-only basis in Finland and abroad.

Education export 

We continued to export Haaga-Helia’s education in selected markets. We continued the modules in the fields of teacher education, sports, ICT, and hotel, restaurant and tourism in South Africa, China and Malta. We also consulted the education authorities of Colombia and Malta in the reform of vocational higher education. At the beginning of 2017, we participated in a project led by Finnish Consulting Group and funded by Tekes, which aims to determine an operating model for establishing a Finnish University Hub in Vietnam. The first part of the project was completed in June, and the funding decision to launch the second part was received from Tekes in December 2017.

Together with the Laurea and Metropolia Universities of Applied Sciences, Haaga-Helia was one of the founders of EduExcellence Ltd., which sells and coordinates the education export products and activities of the three UAS institutions. In 2017, the company’s contractual and administrative position was confirmed, key employees were recruited and the operating model and service provision relationship with the three universities of applied sciences were defined.

The Haaga-Helia Hospitality Competence Center in Estonia provided short courses featuring Finnish and Estonian lecturers. We established a hospitality campus in Tallinn for creating preconditions for opening an office. We engaged companies and students from Finland and Estonia and international partner institutes from the Netherlands and the USA in the development work.

Tuition fees were implemented in January 2017 in the Aviation Business programme launched on the Porvoo campus, and Haaga-Helia's first students paying tuition fees for their degrees started studies. The other foreign-language programmes implemented tuition fees in their education in accordance with the Universities of Applied Sciences Act as of August. Continuing the work from the previous year, we developed the process for students who pay tuition fees, signed new agreements on purchased services and partnerships related to student marketing, and created an annual clock for the tuition fee-based operations.

In autumn 2017, we mapped implementation methods for degree programmes subject to tuition fees provided abroad by interviewing individuals in charge of implementation on the Pasila, Porvoo and Vierumäki campuses. We will apply the information from the interviews to develop quality management. We participated in events concerning quality management in education export, such as the Nordic Qualification Frameworks seminar organised by the National Board of Education and the event on the assessment and monitoring of the implementation of tuition fees, organised by the Ministry of Education and Culture. We also wrote an article on the development of quality management in education export. The article was published in the UAS Journal theme issue on education export (4/2017).