Bloomberg Lab gives students work-life skills that make them stand out on the job market
– The Bloomberg Lab is an education and research environment that uses Bloomberg's databases, tools and news stream. Many highly-ranked international universities use similar laboratories, says Senior Advisor Helinä Saarela who is developing collaboration and the working-life relevancy of education at the university.
The ability to understand and analyse data are increasingly important skills. The Institute for the Future, a futures studies research institute, lists the top five work-life skills of the future and one of them is the ability to understand broad-based data and artificial intelligence.
– The Bloomberg Lab gives our students an advantage when looking for a job and brings practical simulation and wide-ranging global data into our teaching.
Financial professionals around the world use the Bloomberg Terminal and related services. The knowledge how to use the terminal is a major advantage that can help students get a job. The Bloomberg Lab can be widely used both in teaching and research. Students are free to use the lab on their own for coursework and theses.
Students can also use the lab to do the Bloomberg Market Concepts (BMC) online course free of charge to earn their BMC certification. Passing the course gives an advantage on the job market as it proves that you have the skills to use the Bloomberg Terminal and master certain concepts in economics and finance.
– The real-time market and financial data, analyses and news provided by the Bloomberg Terminal are useful to students and researchers in all our fields – business studies, technology, administrative sciences, and communication studies, says Saarela.
Bloomberg Lab is integrated into our education
The University of Vaasa was the second Finnish university to get a Bloomberg Lab. According to Saarela, the Bloomberg Lab is also a merit when applying for international accreditations for education.
– As a learning environment, the Bloomberg Lab strengthens our status as an internationally competitive research university. The lab is an asset that sets us apart from other universities and makes us more attractive in the eyes of potential students, employees and partners, says Saarela.
University Teacher John Kihn uses Bloomberg widely in his courses for the master’s programme in finance. In a course on corporate finance, he used the financial statement case studies that are available for teaching purposes in Bloomberg.
For example, Kihn asked students to evaluate if fraud could have been identified from Theranos’s financial statements. In another case study, students analysed Disney’s main business segments, the primary revenue drivers of each segment, and their contributions to Disney’s total revenue and operating income.
– These real-life examples in the use of Bloomberg prepare students for the working life and tasks that are common when working as a wealth or portfolio manager or quantitative or qualitative analyst, says Kihn.
Master's thesis using the Bloomberg news stream
The Bloomberg Lab is in our main building Tervahovi. Finance graduate Noora Ketola used it to collect the material for her master’s thesis.
– I examined how ESG news published by the media affect the value of a company in the Nordic market in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway, explains Ketola.
ESG stands for environmental, social and governance – factors that measure the sustainability of a company.
– Bloomberg offers good search criteria for news. I could choose the name of the company, for example Kone, and narrow down to environmental and negative news only. I could also select a time span and the sources of the news.
Ketola works as a specialist in anti-financial crime monitoring at Aktia Bank. She thinks that the opportunity to use Bloomberg and gain experience already when studying at the university is a great thing for students.
– It is good to show on your CV that you know your way around Bloomberg’s databases. Especially if you want an international career, says Ketola.