KNOWLEDGE, EXPERTISE AND DIGNITY
MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN
The Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU), founded in 1755, has a long-standing tradition of academic excellence. Three traditional obligations guide the University: teaching, research and community service and it always kept and is still keeping the distinguished position in social life of Russia. Hundreds of prominent leaders who worked or graduated from MSU famed Russian as well as world science and literature.
At present the Lomonosov Moscow State University is still number one in Russia. It comprises 20 faculties, 8 scientificresearch Institutes, the scientific park, a lot of museums, research units located in more than 1000 buildings. Not long ago a new wide scale MSU construction project covering the area of about 130 hectares was launched. Thousands of students are mastering various programs getting degrees and upgrading their qualification. Nowadays there are more than 4,000 tutors and 5,000 researchers working at Moscow State University and the number of students exceeds 41,000 (including 7,000 postgraduates). Since long MSU has been recognised worldwide as one of the leading universities in the world.
Though the Faculty of Economics has been founded in 1941 the tradition of university economic education covers more than 200 years. For example, already in 1772 professor Tretiakov I.A. published the monograph "The reasons of abundance and slow enrichment of states" (which studied the factors affecting the growth of labour productivity. The University Charter of 1804 mentioned the positions of professors of political economy, statistics and rural housekeeping and we can find the Department of Political Economy and Statistics in the Charter of 1835. By the end of the XIX-th century there existed an entire system of economic subjects including the courses in political economy, the economics of industry, agriculture, trade, transport, credit and finance and others. Famous economists of that time such as Vernadsky I.V., Babst I.K., Tchouprov A.I. and Manouilov A.A. were lecturing at Moscow State University.
In the 1920-s there appeared an economic subdivision of the Faculty of social sciences on the basis of MSU, comprising 8 departments. At that time such outstanding Russian economists as Stroumilin S.G., Volgin V.P., Ostrovitianov K.V. and Udaltsov I.D. were on the University staff. Later on in 1941 Udaltsov I.D. became the first Dean of the Faculty of Economics and held the MSU Rector's position for several years.
Since 1941 the Faculty of Economics has prepared about 12,000 graduates, thousands of PhD Degrees and hundreds of Full Doctoral Degrees have been granted. The list of graduates includes many wellknown scientists, politicians and government officials such as the initiator of market reforms in Russia Egor Gaidar, the Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia Serguey Doubinin and others.
The Faculty of Economics is very dynamic. Our challenging epoch witnessing the global transformation of Russian society brought about the need for a serious renovation of economic education and the MSU Faculty of Economics was one of the first to meet the challenge. In the early 1990-s a radical reorientation of teaching process and structure of education towards the needs of market economy and international standards of economic education took place.
Today the Faculty of Economics comprises 20 departments and several laboratories and has more than 350 tutors and researchers, about 2,000 of full-time and part-time students, more than 400 graduates registered for Ph.D. The Faculty has a lot of supplementary structures such as pre-university courses, for example, the Economic-Mathematical School, and short-term programs following the logic of non-stop education. Nevertheless, classical Bachelor's and Master's programs are in the focus of the Faculty's educational activity. All students who succeed in these programs get the Degree of Economist, the highest quality Degree in this prestigeous in Russia profession.
A higher educational institution, even if it is the institution of a long-standing academic record, such as MSU for example, must constantly provide evidence of high quality of its educational services in market environment governed by competition. The latter determines the competitiveness of educational institutions and their curricula. There appear some prestigious Institutes with high level of recognition of their Degrees. But the highest quality Degree can be provided only by the curriculum created as a result of extended teaching experience following the recent trends in corresponding area of studies. This curriculum is a mixture of subjects specific for each educational institution and thus reflecting the so-called essence of education. The catalogue of Programs for the Faculty of Economics aims to demonstrate the content of education provided, the guidelines for different grades of education and specialities.
The English version of the Catalogue is published for the first time and we hope you will find it helpful.
We welcome your interest in the MSU Faculty of Economics and look forward to your joining us.
Kolesov V.P.
Dean Faculty of Economics
