There are 9 units of economics discipline in Finnish universities. Most of them are far too small to maintain independently an integrated doctoral programme. In 1990 a joint doctoral programme, the Finnish Doctoral Programme in Economics (FDPE), was designed, to provide graduate students, irrespective of their home institution, with a thorough and systematic training in the skills required of the contemporary academic and professional economists.*
Today FDPE serves as a cooperative platform between the universities that facilitates cross-institutional participation in teaching activities, and coordinates and finances special short courses in economics organized by the participating universities.
While the objective is to guarantee access to all students to the joint teaching resources, the individual doctoral programs of the participating universities remain the basic units of education, organizing the courses and grading them according to their own standards. The student's host institution grants the degree and accepts the courses as part of it on the basis of its usual practices.
FDPE students are welcome to participate in the workshops aimed at doctoral students organized by the Helsinki Graduate School of Economics (Helsinki GSE) and the Graduate School of Finance (GSF) on several research fields of economics. Students from the member universities are encouraged to present their ongoing work, comment the others' work, or just to learn from the others' presentations in the workshops.
The Supervisory Board of FDPE consists of representatives of each member university. The Board, and the Steering Committee associated to it, agrees on and coordinates activities related to FDPE.
Apart from the member institutions, FDPE has been financed by the Academy of Finland, Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation, the Bank of Finland, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, and the Research Foundation of the Cooperative Banking Organization in Finland. Courses have also been co-organized and co-financed with several institutions.
*For more information on FDPE's history in Finnish, see Mikko Puhakka's (2010) paper "Kansantaloustieteen valtakunnallinen jatkokoulutusohjelma: menneisyys ja tulevaisuus" (PDF) in Kansantaloudellinen aikakauskirja (KAK, 1/2010).