New collaboration with Oulun normaalikoulu – Inspiring upper secondary students to explore business studies

The visit marks the first step in a broader collaboration initiative aimed at increasing students’ understanding of what it means to study business and the opportunities that business studies can offer.

The visit focused on the Social Studies 2 course, whose content emphasises economics – a theme that was incorporated into the session. At the same time, the aim was to highlight the diversity of business education and research. Feedback from the teachers was encouraging:

“They felt that this type of content greatly serves its purpose – not only by broadening understanding of what business studies involve, but also by offering students concrete examples of what research and teaching look like at their local university, the University of Oulu,” says Dean for Education Satu Nätti.

A glimpse into research

In addition to discussing the content of business and economics studies, the lesson included an introduction to the research conducted at OBS.

According to Doctoral Researcher Nea Kunnari, the students appeared genuinely interested in the visit. Alongside the economics themes covered in the course – such as GDP and economic cycles – Kunnari aimed to show what else economics encompasses in order to broaden the students’ understanding of the field.

She engaged the students with a short survey in which everyone participated, allowing the class to examine the results together.

“We presented one of the research topics of our Economic Resilience research group, namely the resilience of Arctic regions in the context of the green transition. In connection with this, we conducted a small data collection exercise in which we explored students’ views on regional development,” Kunnari explains.

Doctoral Researcher Nea Kunnari.

Exploring opportunities for further collaboration

This form of collaboration is new and has been launched in 2025 as the university seeks to strengthen ties with its “own upper secondary school,” Oulun normaalikoulu. For example, the Faculty of Humanities has already offered students the chance to attend lectures and learn about different disciplines. This collaboration has been further supported by the physical proximity of the institution, as the school now operates in university facilities.

“There are talented students at Normaalikoulu, and we would like more of them to choose to stay in Oulu for their further studies,” Nätti continues. “At this stage, the collaboration focuses on the Social Studies 2 course, but in the future we could consider whether similar visits to introductory university courses could also be arranged.”