ICEF and LSE Sign Agreement for Next Four Years

On June 24, 2013, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), represented by ICEF Project Director from the LSE Richard Jackman, and the HSE, represented by First Vice Rector Vadim Radaev, signed an agreement on the activities and development of the HSE’s International College of Economics and Finance (ICEF) for the next four-year period. Sergey Yakovlev, Director of the ICEF, told us about this cooperation.

— Sergey, would you please tell us more about the ICEF’s key areas of development for the forthcoming period?

— The ICEF will continue implementing the updated Development Programme which is aimed at creating—as part of the HSE and in cooperation with the LSE—a center of academic excellence in economics and finance. Our key tasks include strengthening the College’s academic potential as the basis for developing an internationally recognized reputation for research and academics.

Along with the continued recruitment of PhD holders, which the ICEF started in 2007, we have set before ourselves the task of attracting world-renowned researchers and leaders in academic fields from the global labour market for full-time work at the ICEF.

This year we launched a new specialization in Mathematics and Economics in our double-degree undergraduate programme, which has already evoked great interest among prospective students. Interest in the other new specialization, Accounting and Finance, one of the most popular in the world, has also grown. We want our programmes to be more widely available, and this is, among other things, thanks to the growing number of international students in our English-language programmes and broader opportunities for academic mobility for our students both during and after their studies.

Today, a vertical form of mobility prevails in the ICEF undergraduate programme, where about half of the graduates proceed to postgraduate programmes in international universities. We are planning to develop exchange programmes, including with those universities that implement the London University international programme, in order to give our students an opportunity to spend a semester or a year in an international university and earn credits that will be recognized for degrees from both universities.

One of the new tasks for the next period is to develop the college’s academic administration which will ensure the sustainable achievement of its long-term strategic goals. For this purpose, we are planning to expand the international academic community’s participation in the work of joint committees and councils, and to develop academic self-governance.

The ICEF’s history has unfolded in several stages; active work was undertaken during the period of 2009-2013 to transform the ICEF into a research institution…

This process is not fast, and it will continue. Generally, I think that this is the future of any university and department, and, by traveling this path, the ICEF will be able to make a decent contribution to the development of the HSE as a world-class research university and to the international community’s acknowledgment of its academic reputation.

Anastasia Chumak, HSE News Service

Photos by Nikita Benzoruk