Russia’s first Western-style post-graduate business school opened here last week as a joint project of Moscow State University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The New Economic School got off the ground Oct. 28 thanks to a $800,000 grant from the Soros Foundation, headed by the Hungarian-born American Jewish financier George Soros.
“I was never a very good economics student,” Soros said at the New Economic School’s opening, attended by Hebrew University Professors Don Patinkin and Gur Ofer, as well as Russia’s minister of science, higher education and technology policy, Boris Saltykov.
Patinkin regretted the absence of Yoram Ben-Porath, the late president of the Hebrew University, who died recently in an automobile accident in Israel and who was a key organizer of the school.
Patinkin also noted the irony that academics from Israel, which, he said, still had much to do to privatize its own economy, would instruct Russians in the ways of free enterprise.
The school will offer a master’s degree program in economics, mathematics and English to graduates of Russian universities. The course will take two and a half years to complete.
Tuition for the first semester is 5,000 rubles (about $12, or an average month’s wages), with subsequent charges to be determined in accordance with Russia’s inflation, which by one recent estimate is now running at 14,000 percent per year.
Soros made it clear that he does “not intend to support (the school) indefinitely,” and recommended that the Russians include the school’s financial requirements in Russia’s aid requests from the World Bank.
In fact, even Soros’ initial grant may not be used if the Russians can replace it with World Bank aid, which Saltykov indicated he would seek. But Soros may not need the $800,000 at the moment.
According to recent reports in the British press, he made almost $1 billion out of September’s pound sterling devaluation, betting that sterling would collapse despite British government support.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
