Information and Communication Technology engineering degree in record time

19-year-old Riko Saarinen graduated from Turku University of Applied Sciences in two years. According to him, his degree in data science gave him a good foundation and enabled her to graduate quickly.

Riko Saarinen graduated as an engineer in two years.

Text and photo: Siiri Welling.

A short holiday and then back to work – but not to study.

This autumn is special for Riko Saarinen in that he will not be continuing his studies in ICT engineering. He doesn’t have to, as he graduated in the spring after squeezing four years of study into two.

– I’m just interested in programming, so I did a lot of it in my spare time, says a smiling Saarinen in the Health Technology Laboratory at Turku University of Applied Sciences.

Saarinen applied to a vocational school after completing primary school. Actually, the reason was that his primary school leaving certificate wasn’t quite good enough for upper secondary school, but a degree in data science was a good option.

– Korona started in the vocational school days, so suddenly there wasn’t much to do either. So I studied a lot remotely from home and focused on programming. Eventually, my teacher told me that if I kept going at it, I would graduate from vocational school early. And that’s what happened, I got my degree in data science in two years,” says Saarinen.

Straight to university

This was also worthwhile in the sense that Saarinen’s final certificate grades helped him to get into Turku University of Applied Sciences. It was actually a good thing, because the university was Saarinen’s first and only choice. the doors to the ICT engineering programme would not have opened the first time around if Saarinen had taken a gap year and gone into the army. Now he didn’t have to. By the time he started university, Saarinen had just come of age.

– The vocational school gave me a good enough grounding that I eventually went to the teacher to ask for more work. I did my first internships in the autumn of my first year, and I also took advantage of the distance learning opportunities in programming and coding. My advisor also recommended courses at the University of Helsinki, which I took in the summer, says Saarinen.

In his second year of studies, Saarinen was already taking third and fourth year courses. He started his thesis in January this year. It deals with the implementation of a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline on the GitLab platform for the MyE.Way software project. In the MyE.Way project, Turku University of Applied Sciences acts as technical maintainer and developer of the MyE.Way information system.

I’ve learned a huge amount, for example about mathematics.

Saarinen does not feel that the courses were very challenging. He particularly praises Turku University of Applied Sciences for its flexibility in the completion of the degree.

– Of course, some courses have been challenging, but there have been no real difficulties. I’ve learned a huge amount, for example in mathematics. Engineering maths was new to me, as I had not studied maths at that level at vocational school. But in programming I had no difficulties, and I’ve managed to overcome all the challenges. I think my average is 4.4.

Saarinen completed his studies and thesis at the Health Technology Research Group on the MyE.Way project as a software developer. In the future, Saarinen would like to work in programming and automation, although he is also interested in building websites and applications. Equally, the much talked about artificial intelligence and the opportunities it brings are also attractive. Saarinen cannot yet say exactly what kind of projects he would like to work on. However, he has experience in building games, mobile apps, websites and automation.

– I am interested in cybersecurity. It would be great if I could work on this in the army, Saarinen says.

Saarinen recommends an ICT engineering degree to anyone interested in coding, software development, cybersecurity or IoT. In the future, Saarinen himself could study more in the form of a master’s degree, but before then she plans to focus on her work.

– At some point it would be great to work for a big company like Google, but there are other big companies. It doesn’t really matter which company, but I love working remotely, says Saarinen.

The article was published on 9.6.2023 on the previous turkuamk.fi website.