A student paradise and a hoax cause crackdowns on international recruitment

“Studentparadiset” – Student Paradise – is SVT’s investigative piece on how Sweden’s higher education residence permit route is being used by some non-EU nationals primarily as a pathway to work, rather than for genuine participation in higher education.

The central claim is that recruitment agents in sending countries – particularly in South Asia including Pakistan – actively market Sweden as a “student paradise” where it’s easy to work full time alongside studies.

SVT reports agents telling prospective applicants that studying is secondary, that it’s possible to work extensively once in Sweden, and that dropping out or studying minimally is common. In undercover footage, one agent claims that “90 per cent of our students do not study”.

The film links the recruitment narrative to Sweden’s migration rules, which allow international students with a valid residence permit for higher education to work without a separate work permit and – crucially – without an explicit hourly cap.

The programme includes statements from students and agents framing the student permit as “the only possible way to get to Europe”, rather than as an education-led route.

A major strand of the investigation concerns fraud in the residence permit application process. SVT documents agents offering falsified bank statements to meet Sweden’s financial maintenance requirements.

In one recorded exchange, an agent explains that a fake account statement can be arranged in return for a commission – described as around ten per cent of the stated amount. SVT has published the agency’s response to these allegations.

The programme also examines the role of Swedish higher education institutions. SVT reports that some universities and högskolor – university colleges, roughly equivalent to the old UK polytechnics – pay overseas recruitment agents commissions for enrolling fee-paying students.

The investigation raises concerns that these institutional incentives coexist with weak scrutiny of agents’ practices and limited follow-up on whether students are academically active after arrival.

SVT includes financial context to explain the incentives involved. It states that international students typically pay close to 150,000 SEK – around £12,000 – per academic year in tuition fees and reports, by way of example, that Högskolan Väst (University West, a university college in Trollhättan) received around 27 million SEK – just over £2 million – in 2024 from fee-paying students.

The programme notes that while full-time study corresponds to 60 credits per year, the threshold for retaining a residence permit in the first year may be as low as 15 credits.

On scale, SVT reports that it reviewed 876 fee-paying students across three university colleges in western Sweden – in Borås, Trollhättan and Skövde – and identified 106 students who didn’t meet study requirements. It situates this within a national context of around 46,000 new international students in Sweden in the most recent academic year.

The capping of paradise

Migrationsverket – the Swedish Migration Agency – says that “a person who does not intend to study should not have a residence permit in Sweden”. Sweden’s migration minister Johan Forssell says that the loopholes and abuse “must go” and that the situation is “unacceptable”.

There are already proposals on the table. The most concrete is a cap on work while holding a residence permit for higher education studies – a Swedish Government memorandum proposes limiting work to a maximum of 15 hours per week – explicitly with the intention of reducing misuse where work becomes the primary purpose of residence. There’s a proposed exemption for internships or placements connected to the course of study, including where a student combines a thesis project with workplace practice. The proposal is also available through the Riksdag.

On enforcement, the government proposal is to make exceeding the permitted working time a specific ground for revocation of a residence permit for higher education studies, and for refusal of an extension.

The stated mechanism is that a permit “may be revoked” and an extension “may be refused” where the student has worked beyond the hours covered by the exemption – so the cap is intended to have practical consequences rather than being advisory.

On study progress, the position in the January 2026 Lagrådsremiss – essentially a formal legislative proposal sent to Sweden’s Council on Legislation for scrutiny – is that the current “acceptable progress” levels have been set through case law (commonly described as 15 credits in year 1, 22.5 in year 2, and 30 in year 3 and later) and that this is too low relative to full-time study.

The government says the requirement should be raised, but it doesn’t set the new numerical thresholds in the Lagrådsremiss itself. Instead, it proposes a legislative delegation so that the levels can be set in secondary legislation, with scope for further delegation to the migration authority for more detailed rules.

Separately but often discussed in the same political package, the Lagrådsremiss also tightens conditions for switching from a study permit to another permit category from inside Sweden. The stated rule is that in-country switching should only be available once the student has completed at least two semesters of higher education, or completed two semesters at doctoral level.

There’s some pre-existing official scrutiny that ministers can point to when justifying tighter regulation. The Swedish National Audit Office has reported on third-country students, focusing on weak signals of “study intent” and how misuse can be inferred where permit-holders don’t register for studies after arrival.

A hoax called Finland

If you’re thinking “well, at least that’s just Sweden” – sadly not. In early December 2025, Yle’s (Finland’s public broadcaster) investigative strand MOT ran a report on education agents marketing Finland to fee-paying students with misleading claims about jobs, earnings, and the ease of financing life in “A Hoax Called Finland”.

MOT says it tested agent claims using undercover calls. It reports calling multiple agents in India and Bangladesh that were “partners of Finnish universities of applied sciences” – Finland’s equivalent of polytechnics – recording what they told would-be applicants, and then putting those recordings to the institutions concerned.

The investigation also reports at least one agent advising applicants to borrow the “necessary funds” to satisfy the subsistence requirement – which Yle describes as contrary to Finnish law.

The human impact in the coverage is described through student accounts of debt, fee pressure, and reliance on food aid. One student interviewed says “I expected a better life than in Nepal” and that agents “didn’t say anything about how difficult life can be” without work. Another student is quoted saying “agents are only interested in their commission”. Yle also reports claims that severe financial pressure can increase vulnerability to exploitation – including sham marriages or sexual exploitation for housing.

On the university side, the same Yle report includes direct responses from institutional leaders acknowledging the misinformation problem and indicating possible contract consequences.

Metropolia University of Applied Sciences – one of Finland’s largest – had its deputy CEO Simo Mustila quoted saying it’s “really hard to find work… without Finnish language skills”. LAB University of Applied Sciences vice rector Mari-Anna Suurmunne is quoted saying “quite unfounded promises have been made” and that there’s “reason to consider terminating the contract”.

A recurring thread in the reporting is that the recruitment model created incentives for growth in fee-paying student numbers while offloading information and expectation-setting to intermediaries.

Yle links the current situation to reforms around 2022 that expanded the attractiveness of the route – continuous permits for the duration of studies, and the ability to bring family members – alongside expansion of English-language programmes and reliance on agent networks.

Rapid political and regulatory responses focus on tightening entry conditions and limiting intermediary channels. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government has announced that the minimum income requirement for non-EU students will be set out in law, and the same announcement includes a proposed one-year waiting period before family reunification, and work to examine banning “unofficial” education agents – so that only agents with formal university agreements can be used.

A further tightening track is post-arrival monitoring linked to welfare claims. A government consultation published last month proposes enhanced automated monitoring so that a student permit “could be revoked” if the student receives social assistance – using data-sharing from Kela, the Finnish social insurance agency, to the Finnish Immigration Service so that cases are flagged quickly.

Yle reports that Finnish Immigration Service began post-decision monitoring earlier and that checks of tens of thousands of permits identified a small number of social assistance applicants.

UNIFI – Universities Finland, the sector’s representative body – has previously published sector-wide ethical guidelines and an agent code of conduct (predating the documentary) that sets minimum standards for agent behaviour and institutional oversight. The documentary and reactions have found those approaches left wanting.

The inevitable

Both Sweden and Finland have in recent years tried to make their higher education systems more internationally attractive – particularly to fee-paying students from outside the EU.

Continuous residence permits, family reunion rights, generous work permissions, and expanded English-medium provision have all been part of that pitch.

The investigations suggest that the combination of those attractive features with a commission-driven agent model and limited post-arrival oversight have created the inevitable. It really is only a matter of time before a documentary film maker based in the UK does something similar.