What do you expect from a degree named Management, Communication
and Health? The first very obvious thing is that one must assume that what ever
is going to be on the curriculum will be an interdisciplinary mixture. Due to
the three directly involved academic backgrounds - economics/business
administration, communication and health sciences - there are very different
methodological approaches underlying, right?
I was thinking pretty much the same when I first read about this
degree some when in 2010. Although I was used to study in an interdisciplinary
major, the combination of economics, classical social sciences and health
science seemed to be a bit scary. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a shot and
have some chats with people from USI, doing further research about this path of
study and read some initial articles from the faculty.
My initial fears - the mix of all these fields could result in
picking some basic stuff from each discipline without diving deeper into it -
was blown away with the first five to ten articles I read. Instead I realized
that a lot of knowledge I expected to learn within two years will be thought within
the very first semester!
Although I do have a background in quantitative methods and
organizational sociology - which was a good basic but no substitute for
"real" business administration knowledge - the first semester at USI
will teach you the needed basics. And it will teach you the needed basics in
business, social sciences and health sciences - within 4 months!
The first semester always contains basic courses in
collaboration with the faculty of economics. Everyone will learn the principles
of accounting, managerial finance, marketing and strategy. To sharpen your
social science skills expect at least 2 classes of statistics and data
analysis. The principles of health communication and health sciences will be
laid in the first semester too, but the main focus will rest in you economic
and quantitative methods education.
This amount of classes will result in 25ish hours class a week,
with a start at Monday 8.30am sharp (Monday is Accounting Day, guess why).
Unlike other paths of study you will have to read you lit and you will have classical
homework. Yes I mean written papers you hand in each and every week for most of
the classes. Yes it will be graded and yes it will eat up quite a bit of your
free time. In return you will learn as much as possible during the semester and
have perfect notes as well as study material ready for the upcoming exam
session. All in all I would say you should plan to invest around 45 -70 hours a
week for classes, preparation, reading and homework during the semester - it's
enormously depending on your reading skills, English fluency and paper-writing
experience.
In case you attend Virginia Tech for the second semester,
prepare yourself to put much more work in your first semester. All the grades
you get during the first 6 - 8 weeks will be taken into account and once you
got accepted at Tech you will realize that your exam period will be the very
last week of the semester (usually before Christmas). The simple result of this
is that you will have to study during the semester for your final exams. Add another
20ish hours to the figures mentioned above.
To wrap this section up, what should you expect when you start
your Master in Management, Communication and Health in Lugano? These are the
keywords that reflect it best for me
- Interdisciplinary, quantitative and highly data driven methods
- School-alike system with some early hours
- Challenging papers and group projects from the very beginning
- Very high quality of teaching especially due to the 1: 20
faculty/student ratio
- Academic and scientific environment with great industry
relations
- Long hours but a very steep learning curve
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