In 2019, in cooperation with the Berndorf Private Foundation and the Federation of Austrian Industries (IV), WU launched WU4Juniors, a comprehensive and free educational program for young people. WU4Juniors offers a wide range of online learning modules and a Summer School held on campus to give teenagers access to high-quality educational content in the fields of finance, economics, business, and law. This year, WU4Juniors invited high-school classes from all over Austria to compete in the first ever School Challenge. 28 classes in the upper secondary level participated, and worked on a sensational 5,400 learning modules over the course of 30 days. Due to the success of the program, the School Challenge will be held again in 2022.

Since the launch of WU4Juniors in 2019, over 17,000 users have registered on WU’s own online learning platform LearnPublic and worked on close to 30,000 individual modules. The online modules, currently covering 14 business and economics topics, are available to anyone, free of charge. The most popular topics to date are the ones on the circular flow of economic activities and the main agents involved, contracts, stocks, and global trade.

5,400 individual modules in just 30 days

The objective of the School Challenge was to encourage high-school students to engage with business- and economics-related topics. Participating school classes had 30 days to work on a variety of business and economics topics and complete as many modules as possible. Users collected badges awarded for each successfully completed module. The five classes who completed the most modules won vouchers for events and books. Students worked on a total of 5,400 modules, and over 1,400 badges were collected. In mid-June, Margarethe Rammerstorfer, WU Vice-Rector for Academic Programs and Student Affairs, and representatives of the Berndorf Private Foundation and the Federation of Austrian Industries (IV), the WU4Juniors project partners, welcomed the winning classes to Campus WU. Both first and second places went to the school Wirtschafts.Akademie.Waidhofen/Thaya: Students in class 5AK collected 239 badges for completed modules, closely followed by class 5BK with 229 badges.  Third place for 102 successfully collected badges was awarded to class 3AK from the BHAK Perg. Class 3EK from the BHAK/BHAS St. Pölten and class IVAK from the BHAK/BHAS Gänserndorf collected 89 badges each, tying for fourth place. “The online modules give participants the opportunity to learn more about relevant business- and economics-related questions that we all encounter in everyday life, gaining valuable insights in the process,” explained Margarethe Rammerstorfer at the award ceremony for the winning classes. Due to the success of the program, the WU4Juniors School Challenge will be held again in 2022.

WU4Juniors Summer School also in high demand

There is also considerable interest in the 2021 WU4Juniors Summer School. From July 12–16, WU will be opening its doors once again to a group of approximately 40 motivated teens between the ages of 16 and 19 from different countries, giving them the opportunity to learn more about the diverse world of business and economics and to experience university life for the first time. The application phase for the 2022 WU4Juniors Summer School begins again in the fall.