| PAFIS - 2004-05 | |
Helsinki, May 28th, 2004
Dear applicant,
Congratulations on being accepted to the Program in Advanced Financial Information Systems on behalf of the faculty! The Office of Study Affairs has sent you a bundle of important papers and instructions. Here follow some additional practical matters that we would like to share with you.
Before joining, and during the program, you will mainly be in contact with three different persons:
Alexandra Ohls works at the Office of Study Affairs, where she coordinates administrative matters for all the English-language M.Sc. programs at our school. She's the one to contact when the matter is about registration, certificates and transcripts, formal requirements or something like that. However, she does not deal with the contents of the courses, exams, schedules or anything in that line. Mail to alexandra.ohls@hanken.fi will reach her.
Oana Velcu works as a research assistant and doctoral student at the Department of Accounting, and handles the practical administration of the program. She will also be teaching you in the computer lab workshops. She is the one to contact when the matter deals with schedules, exams, computers, and all the practical arrangements regarding the program. Try oana.g.velcu@hanken.fi or oana@pafis.shh.fi when you have a message.
Anders Tallberg works as a professor at the Department of Accounting, and is responsible for the contents of the program. He does most of the lectures, supervises the M.Sc. theses, and awards the grades. If your query deals with the academic content of the courses, your thesis, or something like that, he would be the one to contact. As you might guess, anders.tallberg@hanken.fi or anders@pafis.shh.fi would be the addresses to use.
If you're not sure whom to contact, we'd suggest contacting Oana - she'll forward your query to someone who can deal with it in the unlikely event that she can't.
We assume that you have read the FAQ - we keep updating it - and will not repeat it all here. But one thing bears emphasizing: Be prepared for a quite heavy workload, and, in practice, plan for a 1.5-2 year schedule. It is very difficult to write the thesis simultaneously with taking all the courses. You'll be learning such a lot of new things.
The way the program is taught may, for many of you, be quite different from your previous studies. There will be literature to read, exams to take, lectures to attend, exercises to solve, cases to submit, papers to write - nothing very strange about that. However, please do not expect lectures that review and restate the material in the books, exercises that are found at the ends of book chapters, or courses that are structured according to a textbook. These are graduate level studies, and it does not work like that at all. The lectures extend and complement the readings - we aim to minimize overlaps. The exercises are more in the nature of projects. The material for the cases you will have to dig out yourselves - in actual companies. You will learn in many different ways, but the majority of the work will not consist of sitting and listening. It will consist of reading, writing, thinking and doing. If you are used to very structured, school-like undergraduate studies, this will be radically different.
We have a very clear philosophy regarding the content that you will learn. It would be a total waste of time and effort to concentrate on learning the idiosyncrasies and menu structures of some particular software package or ERP system. We are not training data entry clerks here! What we try to give you is an understanding of the core technologies that will be important in cutting-edge financial information systems in the foreseeable future. These are things like multi-tier client-server architectures, process modeling and optimization techniques, data warehousing, data mining, cryptographical protocols, XML and web services, just to mention some central elements. They are not, by themselves, financial information systems. They are the tools and building blocks you use in order to design superior financial information systems. The best way to understand advanced financial information systems is to understand these core technologies, and how to apply them in financial systems.
You have a business, financial, and accounting background. Now you will be learning technology. We do not intend for you to become professional programmers. If that's what you wanted to become you'd be studying computer science in another program. But in order to understand technology you have to dig into it and use it - and you will spend a lot of time building prototype systems. For instance: It turns out that very few people really understand what a data warehouse is, and how it's structured, and what the trade-offs and limits are, unless they really have tried to design and implement one. So we will take you through the process, and you will actually do it. The same goes for most of the other core technologies - you will be building prototypes in order to really understand what they are about. It will be heavy going, at times, but it will give you a significant competitive advantage later on. There's a huge difference between people who have only read brochures, and seen demonstrations, and people who have actually explored how things work. When you have to design, specify and manage - and when you have to work with other technology specialists - you will find this experience valuable. And, last but not least, the self-confidence you gain when you realize that even very advanced systems are not black magic at all will come in handy.
The learning process is quite intensive, and periodically it is a high-stress environment. However, it works. Based on feedback from those who have graduated, and on where they have found employment, we feel quite confident that this program contributes valuable skills and gives a return on your investment of time and resources. The employers of the eight first graduates include PricewaterhouseCoopers, Accenture, Nokia, and Roche, as well as smaller consulting companies. Several of our graduates and soon-to-be graduates have already started the process of developing a research proposal in order to pursue doctoral studies at our department, and other ones are in the process of applying for postgraduate programs at other universities.
The program begins in the first week of September with some general introductions to things, and the actual lectures begin in the second week of September. Everything takes place in the main building at Arkadiankatu 22. Wednesday, September 1st, to Friday, September 3rd, you will join the introductory sessions that the school runs for all incoming exchange and master's program students, with lectures and practical directions for getting around the school, Helsinki, and Finland. There's going to be about a hundred people from dozens of countries. This is also when you will complete the registration procedures and obtain your student IDs and stuff like that.
The actual courses will begin on Monday, September 6th. You will meet some new people here, since we typically have a few exchange students and information systems majors who get to take individual courses in the program. We try, as far as practicable, to keep to a predictable schedule, in order to make it easier for people with other commitments to manage their time. Lectures will - if we get our classroom reservations confirmed - generally be on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, starting at 14:30 on the dot. Sessions in the computer labs will most likely be on Wednesdays, also in the afternoon. Mornings, Thursdays and Fridays we aim to keep free from regularly scheduled things, but all sorts of seminars, guest lectures, extra computer lab tuition and things like these tend to provide quite a number of exceptions to this rule.
Following the first lecture on Monday, September 6th, we will host a very informal get-together for all participants. This will be a chance to meet the faculty and your fellow students, hear some practical things, introduce yourself, ask questions and so on.
Please keep checking the www.pafis.shh.fi web site for news and updates - this is really the nexus of the program. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail us - Oana is waiting to hear from you! We would really appreciate it if you kept her up to date with your plans and schedules. We look forward to meeting you after the summer!
Best regards,
Anders Tallberg