Student review [#67657] for International Relations
at IE University

IE is a great university for students interested in business related subjects and adjacent fields. However when it comes to the master of International Relations it is nothing short of a mess. Courses are named in a way to sound very relevant and cutting edge but the reality is nothing short of pathetic.

Some examples: 
Technology, Innovation and International affairs :
A course about disinformation with reading on news articles from 5-10 years ago.

IR and strategy: 
Basic game theory and some few hypothetical IR applications. No application to real life situations because of lack of time.

Data analytics for decision making:
A quantitive methods course. Reading articles on experiments in social science. No tools for data analytics at all. No data handling, no data cleaning.

These are just a few examples but the same reality is true of nearly every course.

There are several non-graded courses which take up time but do not give any in-depth knowledge. This makes the core courses even weaker as students don’t have time to actually study and have to attend mini-lectures which sometimes aren’t even directed related to the programme theme.

Professors are in general good but a common theme is that students are never given clear instructions or criteria for papers making the academic standard lax and grading very subjective. Meritocracy is non-existent. some professors also passing everyone and seem uninterested in giving the courses they teach.

Finally, there is nothing in the courses which give theory and application. They are often descriptive and offer nothing close to real frameworks and concepts which could be of use outside of the university courses. Too shallow for academic rigour and too few applications for gaining experience. This is unfortunately a theme throughout the program in general. There is no thinking about how concepts and frameworks should be learned and applied, instead very brief overviews of different areas of a given subject done. This is a consequence of way too many small courses.

Majority of students at this master want to work in the private sector or NGO sector but the programme still orients its career offering towards development, regional institutions and international institutions.

If you want an IR degree there are better choices for less money. If you want a mix between econ, business and IR there also better choices. I wish I could say that IEs reputation would transfer from the business area to IR master but this is not the case.