From Mikkeli to Otaniemi and on to the world

The School of Business Bachelor’s Programme in International Business (IB) will be transferred from Mikkeli to Otaniemi in August 2026, after which all teaching at the School of Business will take place on the Otaniemi campus. The last IB programme course taught on the Mikkeli campus will end on 14 August 2026.

The students who are currently in their first year in the IB programme will therefore continue their studies in Otaniemi from the beginning of the coming academic year. Their first second-year course, ‘Taxation in International Business’, will already start on 1 September. These students will study throughout the coming academic year in the three-week modules that have become familiar to them, during which they focus on only one course at a time for three weeks. 

New IB students starting in the autumn will follow Aalto’s standard schedule of six-week periods plus an evaluation week. The IB programme consists of three years of study: first two years in Finland, that is, in future in Otaniemi, and the autumn of the third year at a partner university abroad. After the exchange period, students will return to Otaniemi to complete the international Capstone business project course.

On the threshold of something new

Students sitting on the sofas of the Mikkeli campus, Mashal Farhan (Pakistan), Aurora Binfaré (Italy), Jieun Kim (South Korea), Ulrika Östman (Finland), Julius Saarelma (Finland) and Zuleika Mohamed (Finland, ethnically Somali, as she herself put it) say they have enjoyed Mikkeli very much. They have all at least known each other by name and the group has been genuinely international.

‘Of course now that we are moving to Otaniemi, we will in a sense get to experience more, meaning Mikkeli, Otaniemi and the exchange period. We are a bit concerned that in Otaniemi and elsewhere in the Helsinki region many people will have other friends besides IB students. We wonder whether we will find the same kind of close-knit community we have got used to here. The practical matters related to moving, which have to be arranged again, also feel a bit laborious. Fortunately, it does seem that support and help will be available, so in that sense we will not be left on our own.’

The current first-year students of the International Business programme were invited to an orientation day on the Otaniemi campus on 29 April and they will have a second orientation day in Otaniemi on 21 August. The IB programme Planning officer Elli Hämäläinen and the development manager of the School of Business Perttu Kähäri, who is responsible for the transfer of the programme, visited the Mikkeli campus on 18 May to tell the students more about the upcoming changes. Perttu and Elli said that students can contact them easily about any matters related to the IB programme. Elli can be reached at programmes-biz@aalto.fi.

A warm welcome to Otaniemi to all students in the Bachelor’s Programme in International Business!