Abstract:

The final master project plays a key role in the curriculum design of the Actuarial Science Master degree at the University of Málaga. Students have to fulfill their projects at the end of the two-years study program in order to get the master’s degree. The nature of the projects requires the combination of a wide range of skills, which includes analytical and technical ones, as well as professional and soft skills. From this point of view, completing a final master project in this study program can become an interesting opportunity to experiment with real tasks of the actuarial profession before entering the labour market. Furthermore, the Actuarial Science Master degree at the University of Málaga offers the possibility of including a working actuary as a second supervisor, besides the academic one.

Simulating or working with real problems in the field of Actuarial Science in the final master project, which use to be complex in nature and often multidisciplinary, also constitutes a useful way to integrate the contents of the different courses of the study program and get them in context. However, the quick transition of our students to the professional market, mainly through the internships, sometimes becomes a hurdle to properly finish the final projects in the scheduled academic calendar. In an attempt to improve the satisfaction and success rates, a group of lecturers are conducting a broad study about the final master project in Actuarial Science, that includes subjective aspects.

In this paper we report the results of a first exploration of the students’ perceptions of the final master project before they begin carrying it out. By means of a survey targeted to students of the first academic year, we assessed some of the main features of the subjective image of the final master project prior to its completion, like its usefulness for a future successful career, the importance of carefully planning it, or the benefits that the courses and activities can bring. Moreover, the opinions about the usefulness of a professional second supervisor are also investigated.

Univariate statistical analysis revealed that, in general, the highest scores are given by our students to the importance of academic activities and courses to design and choose their final master projects, and the lowest to the possibility of using a second, professional, supervisor and to dedicate more time to plan and design the project. But, a more comprehensive multivariate analysis brought out some additional outcomes, being the more remarkable that there is not a homogenous image of the final master project within our students. We obtained three clusters of students, with substantial differences regarding their opinion about the usefulness of professional supervisors and the relevance of their projects for their future professional careers. In addition, we also analysed these opinions in the context of more general questions concerning the full set of activities in the study program, finding that there is little association between most of the analyzed perceptions of the final project with the general concepts related to professional skills and tasks, the academic collaboration with firms and the transfer of academic knowledge to businesses.

Keywords:

Actuarial, final project, professional skills.