Year of foundation: 1992
Approx. number of students: 8,000
Period of study: End August-End December; Early January-End May
MCI partner since: 2010
The City
Espoo is the second largest city and municipality in Finland. The population of the city of Espoo is about 240,000. It is part of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. The city is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, in the region of Uusimaa. Nokia, the telecommunications company, is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, along with other high-tech companies such as KONE and Fortum.
The city is bilingual, with majority being Finnish and minority Swedish speakers.
The University
Laurea is a research-oriented and developmental university of applied sciences that produces new competence. Laurea's pedagogical innovation, the Learning by Developing (LbD) model, is built on a development project that is genuinely rooted in the world of work, which aims to produce new practices and whose progress requires collaboration between lecturers, students and workplace experts. The best projects produce new competence and know-how.
LbD is also a method to fulfill the overall duty given to universities of applied sciences, involving three basic tasks - pedagogy, regional development and research and development - carried out in integrated and merged fashion. Integration means making a solid connection between the three tasks such that all students, lecturers and other staff can participate in all three at the same time. 