Studying Politics and Governance

I’m Anttoni, a 3rd year Bachelor’s student at Tallinn University. Since I’m graduating next spring, I thought I would tell you some personal experiences from the programme I’ve been studying. I want to give you some insight about what the courses and teaching is like in our Politics and Governance programme. I’m originally from Finland and I moved to Estonia in 2017 to study at Tallinn University.

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The Politics and Governance programme is a three-year Bachelor’s programme in English. We have 4 different modules to choose from: Politics, Governance, International Relations, and Economics and Management. At least 2 of the 4 modules have to be completed in order to graduate. I myself am doing the International Relations and Politics modules, but I have completed some courses from the two other modules as well. I only have 4 more lectures left here at Tallinn University, so it’s safe to say that I have seen almost everything our programme has to offer.

First of all, I want to say briefly something about the courses. Under the programme itself the selection of elective courses is not very wide, but on the other hand you can then freely complete courses from the other modules, or even other subjects, as well. This has been a blessing for me. When I came to TLU I knew that I wanted to study politics, in the widest sense of the term, but I really hadn’t figured out more specifically what under that field it is that interests me the most. At Tallinn University I was able to experience courses from all 4 modules before selecting what two to complete. Experiencing all these different things really helped me to gain knowledge on them and then through first-hand experience I was able to figure out what it is that interests me the most. Therefore, I ended up with International Relations and Politics and will pursue the former in the form of a Master’s degree as well in the near future. Having such a wide BA programme was extremely helpful in figuring out what I actually want, even though I couldn’t venture too deeply into specific topics in the programme. 

Our lecturers represent a wide selection of people from Estonia as well as from abroad. In the Politics, Economics and Management, and Governance modules our lecturers have been mostly Estonian, and in International Relations they have mostly been from abroad. We’ve had people from Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and other countries. This has ensured that we’ve managed to get a fairly wide representation of different perspectives and point of views through our lecturers instead of the focus being just on a certain region.

Our courses have utilized several different learning methods, like individual research papers, group presentations, and exams. I especially like how the workload is divided along the whole course instead of everything being done in the end, it really helps me in terms of managing my workload. Depending on the lecturer we’ve had courses where students are expected to participate a lot during lectures and some courses where it has mainly been the lecturer doing the talking. However, in every course we’ve had seminars where students have always been expected to participate a lot. Usually we have prior reading and then we discuss about the texts we read, or do some group/individual assignments on them during the seminar.

In addition, we also have a very diverse and international group of students in our programme, which enables us to hear more insights from different regions of the world and makes the courses even more interesting.

To conclude this brief information package, I would say that there is something for everyone in the Politics and Governance programme. A good selection of different modules, wide variety of lecturers from different parts of the world, and different teaching methods. I’m very happy with my decision to come to Tallinn University and would definitely make the same decision again. Hope you’ll find this post even somewhat helpful!
 

Do you want to know more about Anttoni's experience at TLU? Find his contact on our Student Ambassadors' webpage!
Read more about his programme here!