04.04.2023

Interest Advocacy at Your Service: How to apply for extension of the study right?

Interest Advocacy at Your Service is a post series, where ISYY’s Specialists for Interest Advocacy are writing about Student Advocacy and giving you tips about themes that you might encounter during your studies. Purpose of the post series is to help students to better understand their rights and responsibilities and also to remind them about ISYY’s Interest Advocacy Services.

When you have been accepted to study as a degree student in UEF, at the same time you will get a decision about the duration of your studies. You should be able to complete your studies in that given time period. The normative duration of studies in Bachelor’s degree is three years and in Master’s Degree two years. There are some exceptions in different majors. For each degree you’ll automatically receive one additional year to your duration of studies. Meaning that if you have been accepted to complete both Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees, you’ll be given seven years in total to complete your studies.

Additionally, a student has a right to register themselves as absent for one whole academic year or for two separate semesters, which won’t be counted towards the duration of studies. A student can also register as absent because of conscription or parental leave, and it won’t be counted in the duration of studies.

If for some reason the given duration is not enough to complete the degree, a student has a right to apply for an extension from the faculty to complete the studies. According to the instructions of UEF, the extension must be applied by the end of May, if your study right is going to end on the 31st of July, and by the end of October, if your study right is going to end on the 31st of December. The extension can be applied with an electronic form that can be found from UEF- e-Services and can be printed from Kamu.

A personal study plan (PSP) accepted by the PSP-counselor or amanuensis must be attached to the application. The PSP must include information about the studies that you are planning to complete during the extended study right and when exactly you are going to complete each of them.  According to the Finnish University Law, the study right must be extended, if the student has a possibility to complete the studies in a decent time frame. The student’s life situation must be taken into account when extending the study right.

It is always a right of the student to apply for the extension of their study right, and the faculty must handle it properly. A student must receive a decision for the application from the Dean of the faculty, to whose authority the decision making belongs to. It is possible that the faculty asks you to supplement the application if there are some deficiencies, and also give you more time to complete the application. They might ask for, e.g., a statement from the counselor of your Master’s thesis about the situation of your thesis and the estimated time to complete the work.

When the application and required attachments have been sent to the faculty, they must give you a decision about the matter. It is not enough if you receive a decision that only informs that for some reason the faculty has not handled the matter. A decision must give you the arguments and instructions, how to apply for a change to that decision. If you don’t receive a decision on your application or you disagree with the decision you can apply for a change from the UEF Board of Appeal. If you need help with that application, you can contact ISYY’s Specialist for Interest Advocacy of your campus city.

Contact information:

Pekka Koivaara, Specialist for Interest Advocacy, Joensuu campus, The Student Union of the University of Eastern Finland, koso(at)isyy.fi, tel. +358 44 576 8465

Mikko Aaltonen, Specialist for Interest Advocacy, Kuopio campus, The Student Union of the University of Eastern Finland, soko(at)isyy.fi, tel. +358 44 576 8414