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The Graduate School of Finance (GSF) is a national doctoral programme, and its main objective is to organize doctoral courses in finance in Finland, yearly national research workshops, a tutorial for new finance PhD students and coordinate the Helsinki Finance Seminar. The board of the Finnish Foundation for Advancement of Securities Markets has now granted GSF continued funding of 1.4 million euros for the next five-year period 2018‒2022.

The national cooperation through GSF has proven to be necessary in guaranteeing a sufficient number of participants for classes, which enables developing and maintaining regular and high quality course curriculum.

The high quality of the courses has received also international recognition, as doctoral students outside Finland frequently participate in the GSF courses. In recent years, the doctoral education in finance has become significantly more efficient and very structured. Overall, the quality of doctoral education in Finland has risen and a PhD from Finland is nowadays valued highly internationally. In practice, this can be seen as success in the international academic job market, which is also internationally the most important way of evaluating the quality and level of doctoral education.

In recent years, many of the graduated doctors have started their academic careers abroad. For example, two recently graduated doctoral students from the Department of Finance at Aalto are now employed as Tenure Track Assistant Professors at University of Miami and Hong Kong University of Technology and Science.

‘GSF is doing a phenomenal job enabling PhD level finance research and studies in Finland. Its role for our departments' own PhD production and placement has also been instrumental’, says Professor Markku Kaustia, Head of the Department of Finance, Aalto University School of Business.

GSF has been operating at the Department of Finance in Aalto University School of Business since 2005 and since then 54 doctors have graduated from the six participating universities of GSF. GSF also manages the operations of the Nordic doctoral education network, the Nordic Finance Network (NFN). Mikko Leppämäki, PhD has been a director of GSF since the GSF was founded.  

More Information

Director Mikko Leppämäki
The Graduate School of Finance and the Nordic Finance Network
mikko.leppamaki@aalto.fi

Professor Markku Kaustia
Head of the Department of Finance, Aalto University School of Business
markku.kaustia@aalto.fi