Successful Start

“Studying in English and the internationality of the programme are not the main distinctive features of it. Our MiM cannot be called as a classical programme in management because almost half of it contains educational disciplines of advanced analytical competences. That was the main idea – to prepare managers for a new digital economy” - Angel Barajas, academic supervisor of the programme “Management and Analytics for Business”, believes.

Master programme “Management and Analytics for Business” of St. Petersburg School of Economics and Management was launched in 2018, and it is possible to sum up the first results. The main achievement, undoubtedly, - very strong motivated students who focus on difficult studying and high results. Now we have indeed an international team of students and teachers. We expected a definite interest of foreign students when we were launching an English-language programme, but the reality became even better of the most optimistic forecast. Even in the very first year 20 students from Europe, South America, Asia and the Middle East came to study in HSE, and it was only one-third of the first intake. What is important that the integration of foreign students took place. As all the leading master programmes in management (MiM), our programme is built on teamwork and interaction. And we saw mixed teams of both foreign and Russian students during their term paper presentations. That can only make us happy.

The second major milestone was the launch of the double degree programme with Barcelona School of Management of Pompeu Fabra University, one of the strongest business schools in Europe. The agreement of double degree programme took place in May of this year, just 9 months after the programme had been launched, what is, in turn, unprecedented for our school and it is, in general, a rare occasion for the University. We are very grateful to our partners for their belief in the programme success and their consent to accept our second-year students to their University as well as to send their students to the second year of study. As a result, master students from both Universities after their theses presentation will get diplomas of both Universities.

However, studying in English and the internationality of the programme are not its main distinctive features. Our MiM cannot be called as a classical programme in management because almost half of it contains educational disciplines of advanced analytical competences – statistical analysis and econometrics, machine learning and data intellectual analysis methods. That was the main idea – to prepare managers for a new digital economy, where decisions are made on the basis of proceeding of a large amount of information, and new businesses are built on the Internet. 

In this year students in some way have already defined their professional future and have chosen one of the tracks suggested to them -  People Analytics, Customer Analytics or Research Distinctions. For this year applicants we suggest one more opportunity – to become analytics for the rapidly developing and attracting more interest sports industry. For doing this we open a new track Sports Analytics in 2020.

But it happens only in the second year of study. On the first-year students learn general management disciplines and learn how to make decisions. Studying of R and Python, which are in demand on the modern labour market, is a must for all our students.  

Academically programme is very saturated and it requires full immersion of students into the university’s study and life, but we realize a huge importance of its adjustment to business realities. For doing this our students have lectures held by famous teachers-practitioners as, for instance, Maksim Lapin, financial director of Moscow Exchange. Maksim Brunelin, who works in Google, taught an introductory course of the Internet data analysis was. Brand Management and Marketing Analysis courses were given by visitor lecturers from Portugal leading business school. 

This spring a study trip to Solvay Brussels Business School was organized for students who successfully passed the selective competition. Students visited international companies’ offices and studied analytical disciplines. Living and education costs were fully covered by the university.

For the successful placement, it is very important to master student to have experience in project work with real business cases, that is why we firstly organized Bar Camp HSE. Our student together with master students from the “Finance” programme were working for presenting to partner companies on quite difficult projects, related to market analytics, products promotion, and business models development.

This summer we open our doors to our new students and we suggest even more scholarships this year. We will do our best to make our programme more interesting and to add more value to it. After all, our future success should be evaluated not in accordance with admission campaign results and success of our events and projects we organized, but in accordance with the fact of how successfully our students entered the labour market.