Misassumption about theoretical knowledge at SSE Riga
Written by Elizabete Kancēviča, SSE Riga Year 2 student
When I chose the Bachelor programme in Economics and Business and SSE Riga as my university, I didn’t know very much about the school. I had heard something but, since none of my friends had studied here, the majority was a big surprise for me in Year 1. Right now (with knowledge of the actual studies here) doing research and talking with many other people about SSE Riga, I have found that there is one very popular misassumption about SSE Riga – “SSE Riga studies are only theoretically based”.
When choosing a university, it is important that you graduate with more knowledge than you entered, and that you will be prepared for the job market.
Well, as much as I would like to skip all (or at least most of) the theoretical part on many courses (and I believe you would, too), some theoretical knowledge is needed to set a background.
However, at SSE Riga theoretical and practical knowledge are in balance – some subjects just cannot be learned without theory, and in your career, you might (depending on your career choice) be able to use this knowledge, but you definitely will be able to use soft skills (how to deal with the workload, how to deal with stressful situations, how to solve a problem using the knowledge you have, etc.).
This balance comes from many highly practical tasks – for example:
- creating a marketing ad for a real company and analyzing the results afterwards (what else would be the best way of developing marketing knowledge?),
- analyzing case studies (analyzing real-life situations) on many different courses (making connections between theory and practice in many different fields),
- creating market research for existing companies (preparing for the real-life career situations),
- developing entrepreneurship ideas in all aspects (learning not only economics but gaining knowledge to create your own company in the future),
- analyzing the financial background of existing companies (because it helps to better understand financial statements, approaches, and processes),
- analyzing organization management for an existing company in cooperation with students from the Netherlands or the USA (two ducks with one shot – you got new contacts in the Netherlands or the USA, and you get to develop your organization management knowledge).
And those are just the ones off the top of my head – sounds pretty amazing, doesn’t it?
So – we are not only rereading the book but actually, the programme is created so as to develop both soft and hard skills for our future career, which of course is also being very much appreciated by employers.
We are happy to learn in a more practical way, which comes together with different evaluation systems, because in our growing economy and with our developing technologies – those soft skills will be what really matters.