University of Mannheim: German Higher School of Economics

Alexander Kustov shares his impressions from the University of Mannheim.

Alexander Kustov, LCSR associate researcher and a graduate of the HSE in St. Petersburg, is a first year DAAD fellow of the MA program in Political Science at the University of Mannheim. After a semester of studying in Mannheim, he would like to share his impressions and give some advice for students who wish to continue their education abroad.

Education, as well as science, is quite an international enterprise. Each of us is free to choose the program of interest anywhere in the world. Nowadays nobody impeded students to study out of their home country. Furthermore, in fact, we are even encouraged to study abroad. Let’s take advantage of it! Last year I received my BA in Sociology from the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg. Luckily, before the graduation I also had a chance to get the postgraduate fellowship of DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) to study in Germany. To make a long story short, I ended up studying political science in the University of Mannheim. As it turned out later, it was a perfect compromise for my ambitions and broad academic interests.

The first time I heard about the University of Mannheim was several years ago, when some of our HSE professors mentioned it as a prospective place to study. But when I agreed to matriculate, I had no idea that this young university is actually the best business school in Germany and the brand of research excellence in economics and social sciences. Moreover, the city of Mannheim, seemingly provincial and unattractive, greatly surprised me with its rich and diverse cultural life, perfect infrastructure, good climate, proximity to numerous European landmarks and, most importantly, extremely developed academic environment with a large number of scientific institutions (in one of them, GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, I happen to work).  In addition, the university itself is located in the largest baroque palace in the country, which is quite inspiring.

The 2-year MA program in Political Science is well-known for its focus on rational choice and quantitative methods. Therefore, it is not surprising that the basic courses here are game theory and, of course, statistics. Here the faculty uses R as standard statistical software and it is far more advanced and complicated then SPSS or STATA, which are traditionally used among sociologists and political scientists. Moreover, students here are encouraged to compile all their assignments in LATEX (a document markup language, which is usually used in math-related fields) instead of just making them in Microsoft Word. In the end, even though I considered myself quite proficient in this field, it turned out to be quite hard for me. Perhaps, it could be related to the fact that I have never studied political science before, so the content is absolutely new for me, which is interesting, but, at the same time, very challenging.

Thematically, the MA program is focused on international relations and political economy. However, students can also choose numerous electives within a broader field of comparative politics. For instance, this semester we could have various courses from “New psychology of voting” to “The North-South Conflict, Development Theories and Development Assistance”. All courses are in English and they are held as seminars assuming that students themselves make presentations and discuss the topics under the supervision of professors. As for me, besides “Advanced statistical methods”, for the second semester I have also chosen the course in “Intra-State Armed Conflicts”, which I enjoy a lot. So far I may even consider writing my dissertation on the topic related to civil wars.

University of Mannheim also provides a lot of opportunities for studying abroad in distinguished American, British and European Universities via Erasmus, double-degree and other partner programs.  I have already used this chance and got accepted to the University of Essex, one of the best schools for political science in the whole world. See you there! 

By Alexander Kustov