The FINANCIAL — Caucasus University (CU) mission is to stimulate, encourage and facilitate up-to date, world-accepted, innovative initiatives in teaching and research. As the main advantage, CU strives to disseminate ideas and skills of global significance, regional importance and lasting value in the South Caucasus region.
Skills required for succeeding in the 21st century
“In order to succeed in the 21st century it’s necessary to provide students with high-level skills, but nowadays student’s requirements are higher, and one needs to provide material in an unusual and yet creative way,” claimed Tinatin Gugberidze, Public Relations Manager of Caucasus University while underlining the further priorities of CU, which is dictated by world economy changes.
In her words, standardized teaching, like explanation of a topic while using a supporting power point presentation and other materials, is not enough. The modern educational environment changes very fast, and one needs to provide knowledge using some simple, but at the same time, very smart techniques.
International studying programs dictated by the world market
“As fashion dictates clothes’ styles, the market demand and working requirements dictate the programme which must be developed by the educational institutions,” said Gugberidze.
Tinatin defined that like in any other industry the educational industry has to develop customer, market, and demand oriented programmes, and in the case of an educational institution the products are programs… That’s why the changes in politics, economy, lifestyle and skills requirements, demand changes in programmes.
The number of CU students continuing studies abroad: priority universities, CU program similarities with international standards
“As Caucasus University has a lot of international partnership, a lot of our students continue to study abroad,” noted Gugberidze.
CU sends up to 50 students each semester to its partner institutions worldwide: Georgia state University (USA), Ajou University (Korea), ISCID (France), Hiroshima University (Japan), Chester University (UK), and to many others. A lot of our graduates continue their studies at graduate programmes abroad, even in top schools and universities worldwide like IESA (Spain), Manchester University (UK), Emory University (USA), Grenoble Graduate School of Business (France) and University of Georgia (USA).
“The Programmes at Caucasus University are correspondent to the programmes at our partner institutions, which serve the simplification of the process of student exchange and the recognition of our courses, or degrees worldwide.”
CU Graduates Employed at…
Gugberidze declared that as Caucasus University prepares human resources with highly professional skills, 98 percent of their graduates are employed, and the other 2 percent are not working for personal reasons, not because of a shortage of work.
“As nowadays we have graduates of our business school, and we had only two graduates from our law school this year, our students are working in different sectors,” said Gugberidze.
Gugberidze mentioned but a few of the many companies where CU graduates are employed: Bank of Georgia; Bank Republic (Societe Generale Group); TBC Bank; HSBC; Standard Bank; Price water House Cooper; KPMG; Deloitte; Ernst & Young; Nikora; Magti; KazTransGaz; Sarke Consulting and many others.
Caucasus University has a Career Development Centre which takes the responsibility for working with local and international companies in terms of the recruitment of our students and graduates. It also consults students in terms of self-presentation skills. DC holds job fairs for the students where the leading companies seeking perfect staff come.
“Our graduates are working in all foreign companies operating on the Georgian Market, but are also working abroad,” said Gugberidze. “Mainly in BP – Azerbaijan; Ernst & Young – Holland; PG – Armenia; British-American tobacco – Azerbaijan; UniCredit Group – Austria; Georgia State University – USA; Kievoenergo – Ukraine, Coca Cola – USA, Societe Generale – Australia.”
Financial crisis’ impact on MBA programs
“We don’t expect major changes in our MBA programmes, as this financial crisis is temporary. However maybe we will consider introducing some subjects into our curriculum teaching students to be more risk averse and to prepare to be good decision-makers in the midst of a crisis, something like ‘Crisis Management’.
Today’s business market focus
Gugberidze sees CU students to be primarily focused on the higher level of the their knowledge, and their skills, as today in the midst of the global financial crisis, students should be very competitive in order to build a successful career in the future…” As John Smith said “Higher education correlates with higher salaries in the future” and this is the rule, but I would just like to add that quality higher education and top skills in the any field are necessary,” said Gugberidze.
Visit Caucasus University:
Address: 77 Kostava St. 6th Building GTU, Tbilisi, 0175 Georgia
Tel: (+995 32) 941691; (+995 32) 313225
Fax: (+995 32) 313226
E-mail: info@cu.edu.ge
On the web: www.cu.edu.ge
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