International Master Course Week "Educating for Global Competence"
Five master students of the Financial Analyst Master's programme of the Banking Institute, HSE took part in a short-term student mobility programme in the University of Economics in Katowice, Poland
The programme was launched in 2014 and run successfully for three consecutive years by Fachhochschule des bfi Wien Austria, with the financial support of the City of Vienna. This year the International Master Course Week was hosted by the University of Economics in Katowice, Poland. The programme consists of two content streams:
- Managing International Projects
- Emerging Markets and Crises
The participation in the programme includes company visits, workshops, social programme, networking activities and sightseeing opportunities.
International partners:
- Austria, Fachhochschule des bfi Wien
- Germany, European University of Applied Sciences Brühl
- Poland, University of Economics in Katowice
- Russian Federation, National Research University "Higher School of Economics", Moscow
- Russian Federation, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don
- Ukraine, Kiyv National Economic University
International Master Course Week, which took place in Katowice, Poland from February, 13 till February,17 2017 was an excellent opportunity for me, for Financial Analyst master student, to challenge my analytical, linguistic and communicational skills. I will judge the whole experience of the programme, and, in particular, the stream I personally chose "Emerging Markets", from academic, social and cultural perspectives.
To start with, it goes without saying that the main aim to take part in the event was to broaden my professional and educational outlook. The materials and knowledge provided during the programme, including pre-readings, lectures and open-source materials were crucial for deepening into the topic of developing countries. Our group has covered the domain of country’s risk assessment, and I believe that we have successfully managed to deal with the topic. We have compared various hard and soft facts, concerning country’s performance on political and economic international arena, and, what is more important, we have designed a model of measuring the feasibility of opening touristic business in such countries as Greece and Turkey. The “technical” results-calculations, based on our model matched credit ratings of Fitch, Moody’s and S&P, which proves the accuracy of our computations. For me, as for international economics graduate, it was useful to apply in practice my knowledge on developing economies and measuring country’s risks, for professional growth in the subject.
As far as social component is concerned, international composition of the conference served as a trigger for multicultural exchange of ideas, concerning such a vital domains as employment, education and overall life view. The participants of the International Master’s Week have had an excellent opportunity to discuss various events, and negotiate on behalf of country’s representatives. It is obvious, that overall opinion about social, economic and political events is formed with the help of mass media, due to different positions, which this or that media stands for, the consequences of incidents are accepted differently by citizens of various countries: opinions on the subject, which were sometimes even controversial, created debating conditions, which served as a stimulus to enhance our negotiation skills. As a result, it was useful for realizing various mentality differences and for cultural development itself.
Finally, cultural domain of the International Master’s Week was as important, as social and educational ones. This sort of trips is an outstanding opportunity to discover the "world" and "spirit" of other countries: we have visited various tourist attractions, including Aushwitz concentration camp, brewery and others, and what is more, we have discovered, how do typical polish students do their studies and live in common polish town: Katowice. Obviously, this type of experience could not be obtained by reading articles or watching photos and videos on the Internet and the only way to get this experience is by passing it through yourself.
To sum it all up, the overall level of satisfaction from the trip is above my initial expectations: when I was applying for International Master’s Week, I could not imagine that it would be as bountiful in all aspects as it was. It is clear, that the original motivation to participate in the programme were educational purposes, but the atmosphere, created by the organizers was prepossessing for widening and strengthening social network and developing the multicultural aspect in all the dimensions.
Roman Antonenko, MA Financial Analyst programme