Academic Year 2015/2016
During the academic year 2015/2016, the University of Economics, Prague (VŠE) has launched a lot of new projects. In January 2016, the first year of the Fair of Prague’s Public Universities took place at VŠE. Over 3,500 secondary school students visited the fair. The xPORT VŠE Business Accelerator organized the zero year of its Startup Festival dedicated to promising business projects.
In January also, the so called Reading Points were opened at VŠE. Thanks to the VŠE’s partnership with the publishing house, Economia, as well as with the company, KMPG, the print version of the newspaper Hospodářské Noviny is available on a daily basis there. Regarding Alumni activities, the first meeting of VŠE graduates living in Austria took place in March.
In 2015, there were 2,985 students at the Faculty of Finance and Accounting; 3,983 students at the Faculty of International Relations; 3,384 students at the Faculty of Business Administration; 2,893 at the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics; 2,085 students at the Faculty of Economics and 1,340 students at the Faculty of Management in the town of Jindřichův Hradec. There is a consistently high number of applications to the study programs at VŠE. There were 10,652 applications to study at VŠE in its Bachelor programs; this is three times more than the programs´ capacity. 3,301 students were enrolled in the first year of studies.
International Cooperation
In 2015/2016, VŠE cooperated with more than 240 partner universities worldwide. It offered Czech and foreign students a broad spectrum of accredited Bachelor´s and Master´s study programs, as well as specialized courses in foreign languages. The block seminars of foreign visiting professors were very popular among students. The number of incoming and outgoing students has been increasing steadily. In 2015/2016, there were 1,076 incoming students within the Exchange Program, of which 182 came within the framework of Summer (or Winter) schools organized by VŠE. Most incoming students were from partner universities in the USA, Mexico, France and Germany.
According to the prestigious QS World Rankings by Subject 2016, VŠE is among the 300 Best Universities for economics and econometrics in the World. In 2015 VŠE was ranked 81st in the Financial Times European Business Schools Ranking. In addition, the university played a role in the success of the CEMS MIM Master’s program too. The program was ranked by Financial Times as the 4th best program worldwide in the category of “Masters in Management” in 2015. The University of Economics, Prague, also took the first place in Eastern Europe in the annual international ranking of Eduniversal. VŠE has been ranked among the 27 world’s best business schools (the top 3 excellent Business Schools in 9 geographical zones).
Scientific Research Activities and Cooperation with the Professional Sector
The university has been involved in research projects and has played a supporting role for the publication activities by its academics and students. Moreover, VŠE itself publishes many scientific journals. Two of these journals – Politická Ekonomie and Prague Economics Papers – are well respected journals with a significant increase in their impact factors. In 2015, VŠE organized 38 scientific conferences, of which 29 were international scientific conferences.
The very successful cooperation between VŠE and its corporate partners is also continuing in the academic year 2015/2016. Česká Spořitelna has been the VŠE’s general partner for many years. The VŠE’s main corporate partners are ČSOB, Deloitte, EY, Komerční Banka, KPMG and PWC. During the academic year 2014/2015 our corporate partners were: 3M, Accenture, the Czech Chamber of Commerce, Kooperativa, L´Oréal, Microsoft, MSD, Business Development Advisory, BDO Appraisal services, T-Mobile, SAP, Bel Sýry Česko, IT Talents, Unilever, Plzeňský Prazdroj, Škoda Auto and HILTI. In addition, the three latter named companies are CEMS International Partners. Moreover, the companies have a chance of presenting themselves at a job fair called Šance, which is organized by VŠE’s Development and Counselling Centre. Experts from these companies are also involved in teaching. In 2015, 548 professionals from the corporate sphere have taught at VŠE.
Sports Achievements by Students and Social Events
There are more than 60 student organizations at VŠE. The organizations bring together students with the same interest in one of the fields of economy or in cultural or sport activities. VŠE also organizes the “Rector´s Sports Day” in April. Students who are talented in sports represent VŠE at sport events as Hockey Battle, University Eights or football battle UniCup, where the VŠE team deservedly won in 2016.
VŠE also supports benefit actions. For example in May students of VŠE together with Czech Bone Marrow Donor Registry IKEM organized a seminar on donation of bone marrow. In April 2016 a second year of “Food Collection” took place at VŠE. It was also organized by student organizations with the support of VŠE and in cooperation with Food bank Prague. Students of prestigious CEMS/International Management programme for the first time could take part in the Corporate Social Responsibility in Practice course, where they are provided with fantastic possibility to make somebody’s life a little bit brighter – be it an orphaned child or someone who is very ill.
Among VŠE most successful social events, were VŠE’s Representative Ball taking place in November 2015 and Alumni Day with VŠE also in November 2015. Also the project of Alumni Wednesdays successfully takes place at VŠE for the second year.