Penta, a Central European investment group, announced the winners of its 7th annual essay competition - Vision 2025. The committee, comprised of Penta's representatives, has chosen 5 works from the 87 registered. The 5 essays chosen were exceptional in their originality, logic and conclusions, as well as knowledge of the given field. The absolute winner, Dominik Stroukal, a student at the University of Economics, Prague, and the Faculty of Social Sciencies at the Charles University, presented a daring economical analysis of the health care system in 2025.
The main idea of his work on the public health care is that “…without deregulation, the problems of the health care system will not only remain as they are, but deteriorate. Any attempts at changes to cost sharing will only lead to preserving the status quo for several more years, after which the health care will undergo another crisis, this time much worse. Cost sharing is not a solution, the solution is participation, i.e. deregulation. And because radical deregulation is not going to happen, the state of the health care sector in 15 years’ time will be even worse than today.”
“We were very pleased by the level of interest and the quality of work presented. One of the topics, the vision for the health care sector, is Pentad’s long-term interest as well. Similarly to the students, we also see significant opportunity for involvement of the private sector in health care to improve its quality and efficiency,” said Jaroslav Haščák, Penta’s Managing Partner.
“We see from the several years we have been doing this that the level of thinking and knowledge of university students in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland is getting better every year. I would like to thank all students who took part for sharing their visions, which inspire us in our work,” he added.
Winners of the 7th annual Vision 2025 competition:
1st place (EUR 5,000) – Dominik Stroukal (Prague University of Economics, Faculty of Social Studies, Charles University Prague)
2nd place (EUR 3,000) – Miroslav Tabernaus (Prague University of Economics), Gabriel Tóth (Philosophical Faculty of the Komensky University in Bratislava)
3rd place (EUR 1,000) – Marcin Miszkiewicz (Warsaw School of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics), Petr Houdek (Prague University of Economics, Faculty of Science, Charles University Prague)
The winning essays will be published on Penta’s Website (www.pentainvestments.com) and the winners will be invited to an award ceremony in Prague.
87 university students from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland took part in this year’s Vision 2025, with essays concerning the following topics:
- Electoral system reforms 2025 (or Are we really represented by the best?)
- Public health care 2025 (or Cost sharing in health care?)
- Current development and its limits for 2025 (or Developers: what are they doing wrong?)
The competition is organised by Penta with a goal of awarding original thoughts of young people concerning business and public life. In all 7 years of Vision 2025, a total of 490 essays took part, 60 of which were selected for awards. A total of EUR 67,000 was awarded to winners in the competition’s 7 year history.