Abstract:

Nowadays university’s development, especially its faculty of economics, demands some new elements to be introduced in higher educational process. Every time, economic knowledge has been connected not only with theoretical but practical issues of economics and finance. This connection has become very topical now in the period of transforming a university’s organization model and creating the third generation university which assumes graduating specialists, scientists, and entrepreneurships.

The goal of this investigation is assessment of our experience of cooperation with industrial partners; find the positive and some problem elements, and perspectives of development of practice oriented higher education in economics, sociology and management.
Now industrial partners and Economics Faculty of Novosibirsk State University (EF of NSU) cooperation has lasted for many years. However, the number of the partners and the variety of the forms of communication have risen drastically for the last several years. Among the partners of EF of NSU there are such financial intermediaries as the regional office of the central bank, some biggest commercial banks, micro financial companies; and regional offices of the four big international consulting and audit companies; and some regional enterprises as well.

Forms of our cooperation are different; they embrace both organization of special events and the longtime collaborative projects. Among the events proposed by the industrial partners it is necessary to point out some competitions and contests that help students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills; practical work and probation period, organized by the companies for student of the Bachelor’s and Master’s levels; participation in some public lectures, round tables, and scientific and practice seminars; and preparation of the special courses by the practices and professors. All these measures let the EF of NSU make the higher educational process closer to the issues of nowadays economic reality; and they help our partners solve their tasks of finding qualified candidates to their staff, participate in analytical work and make joint scientific investigations in some special topics.

Along with many advantages we would like to point out some challenges for the EF of NSU. It has to deal with a lot of organizational and methodological work in order to provide a high quality of the projects involved in. Moreover, we have to pay attention to the psychological questions as we deal with the competitors and the companies of different status and size. Finally, it is necessary to participate actively in all the events to make a good contact and have feedback by the industrial partners.

This academic year the industrial partners of EF of NSU have started participating in Master’s level programs in economics, sociology, and management. A new step of our communication is creating join scientific laboratories to conduct researches. We have a plan to involve Master’s student and postgraduates in them actively.

To sum up, there are good perspectives in cooperation of the university and industrial partners. It gives many opportunities both for the students and professors, and for the companies involved in the educational process. But we realized that it demands many efforts to create qualitative and successful joint projects.

Keywords:

Higher education, third generation university, practice oriented education, industrial partners.