Greetings from the Department of Finance

Peter Nyberg

Hello from the Department of Finance!

I’m happy to tell you that finance continues to be the most sought-after major among students in the School of Business. At the end of the last academic year, 383 first-year students submitted their preference ordering of the seven majors. Of these students, 176 made us their first choice and thus applied primarily to the finance program, a staggering 46 % of all applicants. Since the finance BSc program currently has a quota of 85 students, many talented individuals studying at Finland's top business school did not make it into our program. As we all know, those who managed to get in can call themselves members of a very selected group of top students.

We are constantly developing our curriculum based on faculty input and student feedback from course evaluations and Aalto Finance. We also systematically collect input from alumni, corporate contacts, and international peers. One improvement we have recently made offers us the opportunity to place even more effort into cultivating the skills of finance students. Previously, most of the core finance courses in our BSc program used to be open to all business students. For example, the Investment Management course I used to teach attracted regularly, on top of our 80 students majoring in finance, more than 200 other students from various study programs. Due to these students' varying finance knowledge and technical skills, we felt teaching more rigorous material that would primarily benefit our own students was challenging. Thus, in 2022, we transformed the core finance courses in our BSc program by tailor-making them specifically for finance students' needs. In the current curriculum, we offer Investments, Corporate Finance, and Banking and Financial Intermediation courses open only to finance students. On the other hand, our "fundamentals" courses (for example, Fundamentals of Investments) are open to all other students across Aalto.

The new BSc courses attended only by finance students allow us to dig much deeper into finance theory than we were able to do before. We can place higher intellectual demands on our students and raise the bar, especially for the top grades, much above where it was before. However, the most important benefit of the smaller class size is that we can build considerably better rapport with our students, leading to livelier interaction in and outside of class and a much more enjoyable experience for professors and students alike.

Whereas the finance BSc program concentrates on core finance knowledge, the MSc program has a much broader course offering that students can choose from. Recently, we have added courses covering the most up-to-date knowledge in Sustainable Finance, Advances in Financial Technology, Entrepreneurial Finance, and Ownership and Governance. Indeed, it seems that the education we offer is relevant and that our program is delivering value to both students and businesses: in the most recent Graduation Placement Survey from 2023, 100 % of our MSc graduates, one year after graduation, were satisfied with their degree in terms of employment and agreed that employers value their degree. Of those who graduated five years ago, 73 % fully agreed that employers value their degree, whereas the rest (27 %) agreed or slightly agreed.

We are looking forward to meeting you at the upcoming alumni events! And, as always, please continue providing us with important feedback as finance graduates and current employers.


Peter Nyberg is the Head of the Department of Finance at Aalto School of Business.