Preparing Students for a Future Career: Experiences from the course 'The Professional Political Scientist'

Higher education is increasingly expected not only to provide students with knowledge and skills but also to prepare them for a future career. As political science is a diverse discipline and does not teach students to belong to a certain profession, students of political science often feel uncertain about which career paths that are available to them, and how their knowledge and skills can be used in a future career in the public or private sector. In this paper, we present and discuss the elective course “The Professional Political Scientist” (15 credits) given at bachelor level at the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, which is an attempt to fill this gap. The course has been developed as a direct consequence of student demands and has been given two times so far. We present the preparatory work, the design, the pedagogy behind the themes and exercises included in the curriculum, and, finally, the experiences and evaluations of the first two rounds of the course. Suggestions for teachers interested in developing similar courses are discussed.