Course

The beginning

Once upon a time in the Gräfin-Dönhoff Building of the European University Viadrina, room 309, there were students who studied “International Business Administration”. They were captivated by the speech of a professor from the United States. Professor Anand Desai from the Kansas State University left the students awestruck as he told his attentive audience about a course at his university where the students had the possibility to manage a portfolio which amounted to about 430.000 Dollar.

Young, dynamic and driven by fascinating ideas we decided after this lecture to implement a course at the European University following the Kansas State University example.

Throughout the next months it proved that this was not an easy goal to accomplish. An important pillar of this course was that a professor, who would be the patron of this course, had to be found. Furthermore, it was necessary to consult the faculty and to show them the advantages of such a course, which would allow students of this university to trade with securities. This would also be of considerable influence on the reputation of the faculty and the university itself. Additionally, we had to campaign for a solid monetary basis as well as gaining the expertise of experienced banks.

However, it was crucial to clarify whether such a course would have a legal basis in the German law and whether there was even the possibility for students to implement a course at all.

All those challenges had to be faced by us throughout the first year. Finally, the course called Active Portfolio Management started in the winter semester 2006/2007 at the European University. Furthermore the course has the official confirmation of the department of Education and Science of Brandenburg. It shows some similarities to the course in the United States but also several differences.

Moreover we were able to recruit two professors which will supervise the course. We were also able to accumulate 30.000 Euro as starting capital and also successfully managed to integrate companies into the course and thus obtained monetary as well as personal support.