OREANDA-NEWS. June 28, 2010. A regular meeting of FBK Economic Club took place in Moscow, the topic of the meeting was “The demand for economists in Russia: an overproduction crisis? Within the meeting the lead economic experts answered the questions whether Russia faced overproduction crisis concerning economists or whether this is the crisis of poor economic education, how is Russian economic education evaluated all over the world and many other questions, reported the press-centre of FBK.

Sergei Yakovlev, the director of International College of Economics and Finance of the State University-Higher School of Economics, noted that “there are two markets of economists that almost do not intersect, Russian and international”. According to Yakovlev, the applied educational standards restrain the development of economic science in Russia.

“All quickly developing countries are based on Anglo-Saxon system, where much attention is paid to specialization and practical trainings. But we use old continental system that includes more theory and encyclopedic knowledge”, - explained the expert. According to him, a good faculty of economics must comply with three conditions: it must select the best students, i.e. have a high entry standard; it must have the best teachers whose researches are recognized at the world level and it must ensure demand for its graduates from the external environment. “This requires searching of efficient methods of cooperation with labor market”, - concluded Yakovlev.

Sergei Guriev, the rector of Russian Economic School, noted that “there is an acute lack of good specialists and overproduction of bad ones”. According to his opinion, in general “the situation is not as bad as it could have been appeared, and it changes for good slowly”. According to Guriev, if present-day Russian economists do not have candidates for the Nobel Prize, chances are that current Russian students have such candidates. “When such expression as “Russian economist” is not a curse anymore, this will be the sign of the fact that the quality of Russian education approaches the world standards”, - said the expert. Meanwhile, he warned about the danger of obsession of Russian economic education over itself that would inevitably lead to even larger delay.

 Igor Nikolaev, the director of FBK Strategic Analysis Department, is sure that the problems of poor economic education are reflected by ineffective economic policy, as it is formed by graduates of economic faculties. The expert named lack of demand for high-quality and independent analytics as the main reason for low quality training of economists. Besides, according to Nikolaev, students of Russian economic faculties and higher educational establishments do not receive education with sufficient fundamentality. At the same time, the expert noted that according to the Russian State Statistics Committee, the economic profession is not the most demanded and occupies the 11th position after such professions as doctor, teacher, labor protection engineer and others. On the other hand, Russia is at the average world level by the number of graduates who received education in economics and management (if in 1986 this speciality had only 8.5% of graduates, in 2009 their number was 31.2%). 

Sergei Pyatenko, the General Director of FBK Economic and Law School, noted that “there has always been a gap between practical needs and education received in higher educational establishments and such gap is obviously inevitable”. At the same time, he emphasized that today knowledge is not lasting. “Even the most experienced specialists have to improve their qualification on a regular basis. One needs to train constantly, education becomes continuous and lasts for the whole life. This not only becomes the norm, but one of the main conditions for development of any company”, - said the expert. He stressed out that short-term business education becomes especially topical, although today business education has sometimes to patch the holes in basic education.