Stockholm Student Academy wants more international students to stay in Sweden

This fall, Stockholms Akademiska Forum is launching a new project, a pilot, called Stockholm Student Academy, which aims to improve international students’ chances of staying in Sweden after their studies. The Stockholm Student Academy will provide 250 international students with knowledge about Sweden’s history, mentality, social system and labor market, in order to increase their understanding of Swedish society and improve their chances of establishing themselves in the Swedish labor market. This is exactly what the international students themselves say is most lacking during their time here in Stockholm.

There are more than 11,000 international students at Stockholm’s 18 universities and university colleges. Fortunately, this number is steadily increasing. National surveys show that three out of four international students want to stay in Sweden after their studies, but less than one in three succeed in settling here. The debate about labor immigration has been high on the agenda recently, and an important aspect that is sometimes forgotten is how we treat the talent that is already here. Those who study at our universities and university colleges are an important part of this. Many Swedish companies warn of the skills shortage that tighter labor regulations may bring, and what companies are often interested in is newly trained expertise.

The Stockholm Student Academy will take the form of six lecture evenings at Stockholm University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Karolinska Institutet, Södertörn University, Stockholm School of Economics and Royal College of Music in Stockholm, followed by a career fair organized in cooperation with Stockholm’s student unions. In addition to the lectures, the students will also enjoy visits to Stockholm City Hall, a guided tour of the Nobel Prize Museum and the Swedish Parliament, and a movie night at Filmhuset.