Study

Fabian Schäfer is a first-year student of Economic Policy Consulting. He is pursuing the Master of Science degree.

What made you choose this degree programme?

After completing my Bachelor’s degree in Management and Economics, I was looking for a Master’s degree that would enable me to initiate and influence social and political themes. And so it was a stroke of luck that the new degree Master Economic Policy Consulting had just been introduced. Integrated in the degree course, a semester internship provides ample opportunity to apply my newly acquired theoretical and economic skills in practice.

In which respect have or haven’t your expectations been fulfilled?

Just as expected, I’ve been able to establish closer ties to the Institute – one of the reasons for this has been low number of students, which is limited to 15. Whereas in the Bachelor’s degree, we would only ever get to see our professors during lectures. In my Master’s degree, I do however miss seminars that focus on the details of specific consultancy functions – i.e. how do I translate scientific findings to address my target group? Still, it should be taken into consideration that the degree course wasn’t launched until the end of 2016 and that it is still being optimised.

Which aspect of your degree programme do you enjoy most?

The thing I enjoy the most are the open discussions with my fellow students and teachers on new ways and methods of approaching challenges from an economic perspective.

What has been your biggest challenge to date?

Definitely the Macro 1 exam, which I’m currently attempting to pass for the third time :D

What would you like to become after completing your degree?

Inspired by this degree course, several of my fellow students and myself have set up an initiative (youngperspectives.ruhr), intending to promote a sustainable development of our home region, Ruhr. To this end, we wish to utilise our economic know-how and the interdisciplinary research at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, in order to aid municipalities and projects with sustainable strategies and ideas. We are currently in the middle of our start-up phase and are about to handle our first project. Working for my own company one day would be a good start.

Which advice would you like to give to students who consider enrolling in this degree programme?

Do not focus on pursuing a Master’s degree with an integrated semester internship, but check out other aspects as well, in order to find out if it’s really the right option for you. Apart from that – you should have the confidence to believe that you can effect changes and to have visions of a better future. After all, the #apocalypsepreventionmaster was not selected in vain.