There is a particular sort of naivety unique to our era: the belief that education, that great leveller, can be packaged and sold like a box of muesli. The latest exhibit in this tragic farce is the exposure of a Finnish college scheme that promised students fleeing war a new life, only to deliver precisely nothing. One might think, amid the rubble of Syria or the bombed-out streets of Gaza, the promise of a Nordic utopia would be a lifeline.
Instead, it was a con. The perpetrators, no doubt, are already lawyering up. But the real indictment is of a system that treats higher education as a commodity, and desperate people as fungible units.
The Victorians, at least, had the decency to call a swindle a swindle. We, in our therapeutic language, call it a ‘misunderstanding’ or a ‘failure of due diligence’. The students, lured by the promise of safety and a degree, are now marooned in a foreign land, their dreams extinguished.
This is not merely a criminal matter. It is a moral one. We have built a global education market that incentivises predation.
The Finnish government, with its vaunted reputation for transparency, must answer: how did this happen under its nose? The answer, I suspect, lies in a broader decadence. We have become addicted to growth, to ‘internationalisation’, to the illusion that every problem can be solved by a spreadsheet.
But you cannot spreadsheet your way out of a moral vacuum. The students who fell for this scam are victims, yes. But they are also a mirror.
They reflect our collective failure to distinguish between a genuine sanctuary and a branded lie. Until we confront the rot at the heart of the global education industry, there will be more such stories. More shattered lives.
More Finnish mirages.
