koulutusaste

Koulutusaste is a Finnish term describing the highest level of formal education that an individual has completed. It is widely used in Finnish statistics and policy analysis to measure educational attainment within the population and to study its relation to employment, income, and social outcomes. The term is commonly used as a single variable in population surveys and censuses, and is aligned with international standards such as the ISCED classification, though exact category labels can vary by data source.

In practical terms, common broad categories of koulutusaste include no completed formal education or incomplete education; basic education (perusasteen suorittanut), corresponding to the completion of comprehensive school; secondary education (toisen asteen koulutus), which covers both general upper secondary education (lukio) and vocational upper secondary programs; and higher education (korkea-asteen koulutus), comprising first-cycle qualifications (bachelor's), second-cycle (master's), and further degrees such as doctoral studies. In Finland, higher education is delivered by universities and universities of applied sciences (AMK/UAS).

The concept is used for monitoring educational inequality, planning education and training services, and evaluating labor market outcomes. It also helps compare Finnish attainment with international peers.

Limitations include that koulutusaste does not reflect the quality, field of study, or part-time education, and changes in classification over time may affect comparability. For precise categorization, researchers refer to the coding scheme of the relevant dataset or Statistics Finland's ISCED-aligned tables.