The Story so Far....

It was 1989. Finland had a problem: too many young people, not enough university places. The Ministry of Education made an offer: extra funding for any institution willing to expand its intake.

The Helsinki School of Economics (today: Aalto University School of Business) said yes. The question was where?
The Helsinki campus didn't have the space or the facilities for the intensive three-week module format the new programme demanded. So they looked elsewhere, and landed on Mikkeli.
 

Mikkeli.
A quiet city of about 50,000 in the Finnish Lakeland - the kind of place that has more forest than noise, where winter arrives early and stays awhile, and where, once upon a time, nobody expected a world-class international business programme to take root. It sits roughly 230 kilometres northeast of Helsinki; two hours by train through birch trees and frozen lakes. By Finnish standards, it's not remote. By the standards of most people who end up there, it is delightfully far from everything they knew.
 

The BBA programme - Bachelor of Business Administration - launched that same year, and with it came Probba.
Born from the Latin Pro BBA, meaning simply "for BBA", the association was the beating heart of a student community that had no choice but to be close-knit. When you live, study, and spend your winters in the same small town, bonds form quickly. They tend to stick.
 

In 2001, the degree was renamed BScBA - Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.
The Latin origin became a little more obscure. Nobody cared. The name Probba stayed. The Babas stayed. Some things are bigger than a curriculum update.
 

For over thirty-five years, Mikkeli shaped a particular kind of graduate, internationally-minded, adaptable, used to intensity, and inexplicably fond of a small city most Finns have driven through but never stopped in. Thousands of Babas have passed through, spread across the world, and still come back to Mikkeli to remember.
 

And now, a new chapter.
 

From autumn 2026, the BScBA programme moves to Otaniemi,  Aalto's main campus in Espoo, on the doorstep of Helsinki. A living, breathing innovation district: 15 minutes from the city centre by metro, home to Aalto's schools of business, engineering, arts and design all on the same campus. Bigger stages. New faces. Considerably shorter winters (though the Finns would dispute this).
 

Mikkeli gave Probba its name, its character, and thirty-five years of stories. Otaniemi is where the next ones begin. We're bringing everything with us.

~ Minister of Communications'26
Diya Hooda