Metropolia is a university of applied sciences, and UAS thesis rules differ from university ones in a way that matters more than the credit count: your thesis is a public document by law, and the whole process is built around that.
Credits, and the course structure
The thesis is not one lump. It is delivered as separate 5-credit courses, and which set you take depends on your programme.
Bachelor's — 10 or 15 ECTS:
- A 10-credit thesis runs as Planning and Execution of the Thesis Work (5 ECTS) and Finalising and Reporting of the Thesis and Maturity Test (5 ECTS).
- A 15-credit thesis runs as Planning of the Thesis Work (5 ECTS), Implementation of the Thesis Work (5 ECTS) and Reporting of the Thesis and Maturity Test (5 ECTS).
Master's — 25 or 30 ECTS, as a single Master's Thesis course.
All theses are assessed against common assessment criteria, defined separately for bachelor's and master's level — so the criteria do not change between degree programmes, even where the credit structure does.
The three stages
Metropolia describes the thesis as progressing through planning, implementation and publication. Detailed guidance for each comes from your own degree programme; the central pages set the framework.
Publicity: the rule that shapes everything else
This is the part worth understanding before you choose a topic, not after.
Theses are public documents, and Metropolia grounds this in the Publicity Act (621/1999), which the UAS must comply with in all its activities. The practical consequence is stated plainly: the UAS must make the thesis available on request to anyone who asks to see it.
So a published thesis may not include confidential information covered by a company's trade secrets, or anything else classified by law.
What to do with genuinely confidential material
If your work gives you access to confidential background material, you may apply — for well-founded reasons — to have an appendix classified as confidential. Evaluators are bound by a duty of confidentiality over such appendices.
But read the limitation carefully: confidential material is not evaluated and not archived. Metropolia says directly that you should not put any section of your final thesis in that appendix. It is for protecting background data, not for smuggling assessed content out of public view.
Publication in Theseus
By default, completed theses are published in Theseus, the shared database of Finnish universities of applied sciences, openly accessible.
A different channel — Metropolia's electronic archive — is available only in special cases. The examples given are a student with a non-disclosure for personal safety reasons, or a thesis unsuitable for Theseus, such as an artistic work. Metropolia states explicitly that using an alternative channel is not a way to conceal confidential information.
If you do use the alternative channel, upload the notification document to Wihi, and save the link your supervisor gives you in Wihi in place of the Theseus link. The file can sit anywhere in Wihi except a confidential area.
Removal after graduation
A graduate with a well-founded reason can ask the Metropolia Library to remove a thesis from Theseus. A copy remains in Metropolia's electronic archive and can be made available on request — so this reduces visibility rather than ending publicity.
Turnitin
All theses for a UAS bachelor's or master's degree must be checked in Turnitin before they are assessed and published. Instructions come from your degree programme.
Two practical points Metropolia spells out:
- Run the check on the version you intend to publish.
- Do not submit classified background material — personal data, patient data, trade secrets — to Turnitin.
The report is used to judge how original the text is, by identifying passages identical to existing sources.
The maturity test
The thesis includes a maturity test demonstrating in-depth knowledge of the field and proficiency in Finnish or Swedish, depending on your school language.
- Language is assessed by a language teacher.
- Factual content is assessed by your thesis supervisor.
- Timing and format follow your degree programme's guidelines.
If you went to school in a language other than Finnish or Swedish, the maturity test is written in Finnish in Finnish-language programmes and in English in English-language programmes.
At master's level the maturity test can take a different form — a press release or an executive summary, for instance — agreed with your supervisor. The recommended way of demonstrating competence at that level is a publishable article indicating professional expertise, alongside the maturity test.
Accessibility
Theses published in Theseus must meet accessibility requirements. Metropolia's Word template already has the basics in place, including paragraph styles for heading levels. Degree programmes may have field-specific versions of the template, which your supervisor can point you to.
This is easy to overlook and awkward to retrofit: if you build your document with manually formatted headings instead of real heading styles, you will be fixing it at submission time.
Submission, in order
- Complete the thesis.
- Run the Turnitin check on the publishable version.
- Submit for assessment by the degree programme.
- Once approved, save it in Theseus.
Note that approval comes before publication, and Turnitin before both.
What we could not confirm
Metropolia does not publish a similarity percentage threshold for Turnitin. The report is used to assess originality, but no numeric limit is stated. Any specific percentage you see attributed to Metropolia should be traced to your own degree programme's instructions before you rely on it.
The common assessment criteria are published separately for bachelor's and master's theses; this page does not reproduce the grading bands, because they are maintained as their own documents and change independently of the process page.
