by Jane Yager

Alexandru Rusu, 24, walks through the lounge of the HSoG with an eager spring in his step. When he sits down, he settles on the edge of his seat, leaning forward to speak. As he begins to talk about his studies, he often presses his hands together in concentration, seeking exactly the right word. At such moments, his speech shows both the polish of an ambitious young professional and the pragmatism of a day-to-day policy maker. The boyish enthusiasm that was evident in his walk also remains.

All of these notes of Alex’s personality may have something to do with the historical circumstances of his upbringing. Growing up in Romania in the 1990s, he experienced the changes underway in his country as a feeling of moving quickly through history. “What the West got in 30 years, we had to get accustomed to in five years,” he says. “From two hours a day of TV shows to non-stop broadcasting, everything from jeans to computers to Internet.” To Alex, this pace was exhilarating; he speaks of the euphoria of trying to catch up with the West.

By the time Alex began university, the European Union loomed large in the Romanian public imagination. “Everyone was talking about the EU but nobody really knew what it was,” he says. Romanians held high hopes for EU accession, but had little actual information about it. Seeking to understand the reality of the institution that had sparked such enthusiasm, Alex completed a master’s degree in public policy and European integration in Bucharest.

Forays abroad gave him the chance to compare western and eastern Europe, and he was struck by the divergent attitudes toward risk in what he calls “new” and “old” Europe. “In western Europe things are very settled,” he says, whereas “in Romania things can change from one day to another”. With this openness to risk come heady opportunities for young people like Alex. He notes that a 27-year-old serves as a Romanian European Parliament representative, that a 25-year-old oversaw the country’s privatisation. 

Alex says that he, like his home country, embraces risk. He credits this attitude with his decision to come to the Hertie School of Governance. Many Romanian students, led by historical and linguistic ties, prefer to study in France or in other countries with Romance languages. Alex, seeking a better understanding of the European Union, was drawn instead to Germany, a country he calls the “engine of the EU”. He expects the insight into German society he has gained at the HSoG to help him succeed in Brussels, where he plans to work after completing his MPP studies.

But for Alex, the HSoG is much more than its Berlin location. Most essential, he says, is the school’s combination of an Anglo-American model of teaching with a curriculum focused on the EU. In seminars he had attended in the US, he greatly valued the detailed feedback on his work, personal contact with professors, and emphasis on practical skills that American universities offered. The public policy curriculum at such universities, though, was “too self-centred” for Alex’s interests—too inward-focused, not enough about Europe. Only the Hertie School combined this teaching model with in-depth coursework on the European Union and European integration.

At the HSoG, Alex says, he has already made visible gains in practical skills through the memos and policy recommendation briefs he has written in his courses. The microgroup politics he has navigated in group projects are directly applicable to the working environment and he describes the atmosphere among his fellow students as a “good competition” that builds motivation.

One word that Alex uses frequently to describe the HSoG is ‘mentoring’. The academic advisor is a designated mentor who offers career advice, but “All the other professors are very approachable: When you want advice you can go to their office, you can go with them to the cafeteria, you can speak with them. You are looked at almost as an equal, which is much more like being a PhD student than like the usual master’s programme”.

As an outgrowth of this strong mentoring, he points to the power students have to influence the curriculum. “If enough students are interested in a course topic that’s not offered, the school is open to finding a professor to teach that class. We’ve already had that with health policy, we’re trying to do that with education policy. First they try to find a core teacher to teach it, if not the university goes poking around to see who can teach it.”

When he speaks about the other courses he’d like to design—an urban policy class, a class on lobbying—Alex leans back in his seat, his eyes gleaming with the broad-ranging intellectual curiosity that led him to feel in his early days at the HSoG “like a kid in a candy shop”. But then he seems to catch himself, remember that he is not a kid in a candy shop but rather a policy-maker in training, focused and driven. Reigning in his enthusiasm, Alex presses his hands together and edges again to the front of his chair. He begins to talk about the EU as a hub for lobbyists, his attention once again concentrated on the practicalities of the career that lies ahead of him.