What Else To Learn At ICEF Apart From Economics and Finance. Part 1
In addition to the core curriculum, ICEF offers a wide array of electives allowing students to learn programming, data management and much more. Students are welcome to join on-campus activities or contribute to project work. Here’s how ICEF students customize their learning process, upgrade their skills as researchers or project team members, and join student life by assuming, for example, roles as tutors.
ICEF has for 25 years been a source of specialists suited for jobs in almost any economic sector from entrepreneurship to IT. ICEF offers Economics and Finance degrees that are engaging and up-to-date. Its students receive awareness of the skills they would need for their careers early, adjusting their learning trajectories to their needs. As they themselves claim, “Finance and Economics majors can build career in whatever direction they choose.” So what it is that makes ICEF students suitable for so many jobs and sectors?
How electives benefit the core curriculum
Supplementing ICEF’s content-intensive core curriculum is a diverse range of electives. These teach programming, data management, practical trading, soft skills, and foreign languages. Plus, there are employer-led courses and a special set of intellectually stimulating courses from ICEF Academia. If a student wishes to take all optional courses, they can do so at no extra charge. The choice is wide and designed to suit all. This academic year, ICEF offers a total of fourteen electives, seven per semester, as well as six foreign language courses.
ICEF is HSE’s only faculty with so many foreign language courses to choose from
One winning line of courses is programming and data management. To meet the students’ high demand for the programming skills, ICEF cooperates with the Faculty of Computer Science (FCS). Just as ICEF has multiple courses in Finance and Economics, FCS has a lot to offer on the programming side. This collaboration is designed to benefit both sides.
ICEF stays abreast of labour market trends, updating its electives list based also on the needs of its students. If there’s a skill that can put our students more in demand but is yet unavailable to them, we design a relevant course and form a group for it. Many of our graduates working at the confluence of finance and technology say, “There is more than enough IT training available at ICEF to start careers in IT.” Programming and IT remain a number one choice among optional courses.
ICEF wants its students to build not only professional awareness but also personal confidence before they enter the job market. For this, it offers soft skills courses that teach interview behaviour, stress management, time management skills, self-presentation techniques and other aspects of communication. Students can practise their skills at various case championships, which many complete as confident winners. Great support is provided in this respect to students by ICEF Career Services.
How students are engaged in project activities
ICEF students are welcome to join projects in research or applied fields. They join a group or individual project as early as their second year to work on tasks in subject areas as diverse as Economics, Social Studies, Finance, History, and Entrepreneurship. Assisting and contributing to these projects are ICEF’s external business partners.
One example is the IT startups facilitated by Sberbank’s accelerator SberStudent, where students can come up with IT product prototypes and present them to the board of experts. Teams qualifying for the final can win funding for their startups.
Upper-year students are welcome to join either of the HSE’s laboratories – ICEF International Laboratory of Financial Economics, The Laboratory for Economics of Innovation or The International Laboratory of Experimental and Behavioral Economics. These offer real research projects allowing students to apply their knowledge of economics, statistics, econometrics, as well as their programming skills. Traditionally, ICEF students’ theses win top places in HSE Student Research Paper Competition.
How ICEF helps students to facilitate career success
Acquaintance with the world of professions begins early at ICEF. While some students enroll fully aware of their career options and intending to adjust their learning paths accordingly – which the flexibility of ICEF’s degree programme fully allows – others are open to everything new. ICEF Career Center organizes for its students a huge number of career events – workshops, interviews, lectures, trainings. In addition, there is First Step course which offers individual and group training in basic job search skills and professional self-positioning.
Employers are always interested in cooperating with ICEF Career Services, hosting courses, posting job vacancies in ICEF’s channels, offering fast track recruitment and contributing to student career venues. When asked to assess our graduates’ workplace performance, many of the large employers respond, “We are competing for talents and see ICEF as one of our primary sources of promising candidates.” With many of employers, ICEF students are preferred candidates for internships and are recruited as interns already in their first year.
What student organizations offer
HSE University is a huge community where one can find like-minded people in almost every activity area. The students of ICEF welcome opportunities unfolding their potential. They are free to start a new community or contributing to the long-established ones. What’s there to help newly enrolled students to navigate diversity of student organizations, sports sections and electives and to figure out how things work at HSE? ICEF’s tutorship programme and Student Academic Council (SAC).
Invited to be tutors are 2- to 4-year students who adhere to an active lifestyle, are responsible, have higher levels of empathy and can offer life and work experience. Tutoring began here in 2010 as a student initiative to gradually become an integral part of student services. You can read more about it by viewing this page.
Initiated as a form of self-governance, ICEF Student Academic Council (SAC) has evolved into a standing body with sub-committees, electoral procedures and venues for having debates and launching projects. Every class of students elects two representatives to ACC to facilitate its main goal of promoting ICEF’s academic life and maintaining dialogue with the teachers and the management.
With active lifestyle and diverse passions and interests, ICEF students seek to become versatile personalities and are dedicated to achieving their goals. At ICEF, there are many projects and initiatives for students to join. These include ICEF Evening School, ICEF Crew, Keystone career club, HSE Outreach charity movement, and Dorm Olympics. There are vocal and music projects. Those interested in exploring the financial side of art management can even act as organisers of contemporary art shows.
Many ICEF students actively practise sports. Our teams repeatedly win HSE champion titles in football, swimming, basketball, Russian bench press, track and field, and volleyball. ICEF football team is the only within HSE to consistently qualify for annual inter-campus football tournament. In 2023, ICEF GP debuted in HSE Kart Racing.