The good news reached EAFIT on behalf of the School of Economics and Finance. Through resolution number 10415 of July 14th, 2015, the Ministry of National Education informed the University that the qualified registry to offer the doctorate in Economics was granted. This program is only offered by five universities in Colombia and it is the first of its kind in Medellín.
As stated by Juan Luis Mejía Arango, president of Universidad EAFIT, the new qualified registry allows us to achieve the dream of having another doctorate, for a total of six doctoral programs. This is in line with the Institution´s effort to train and hire PhDs. “When we devised the University´s development plan we wanted the undergraduate programs to be consolidated, but we also wanted to ascend in the second and third university cycles, especially in the Master´s degrees and doctoral programs”.
According to Juan Felipe Mejía Mejía, dean of the School of Economics and Finance, the new doctorate has the support of three high-level international institutions: the American University (Washington D.C.), Brandeis University (Boston) both in the U.S., and the Catholic University of Louvane, in Belgium.
Another prominent feature of this program is that, although it belongs to Economics, it has an emphasis in Finance. It is then expected that this program stands out in Latin America due to this differentiating factor. Based on the program´s projection, the dean considers that “being a School where quality and international-relevance research is originated, visibility will be enhanced, but above all, it will have the capacity to interact in a more definite way with the scientific community”.
It required three years of collaborative work to reap the benefits. One of its members is Diego Alexander Restrepo Tobón, professor of the Department of Finance, who states that this achievement is an acknowledgement to the maturity of EAFIT´s research and extension process.
Diego Alexander also explained that some of the aspects that were assessed to grant the registry were the faculty´s capacity, the school has 22 PhD holders in addition to those who are currently undertaking the doctoral degree; the institution´s experience in offering undergraduate, graduate diplomas and Masters programs in Economics and Finance; and the infrastructure to offer optimal conditions to students, as their capacity to send them abroad and as well as the arrival of professors from other universities.
The PhD graduate profile
Although the decision of undertaking a doctorate degree is vocational due to the effort and time required to obtain such a title, Alejandro Torres García, professor of the School of Economics, states that there is a growing need to hold a doctorate degree in order to make part of the academia. In addition, companies are realizing that hiring personnel with the ability to produce research and knowledge in order to set themselves apart from the competition and generate profitability is a must.
Through this program, which will soon be offered by EAFIT, students will be able to receive information from professors of foreign partner universities, or even do internships or part of their doctoral thesis abroad. In terms of the profile, Diego Alexander explains that this program´s graduate students will be able to work in the academia and they will have the skills to enter the public and private sectors as expert consultants or high-level researchers.
This is a four-year, full time program, however; the curriculum can be adapted to the needs of those with employment obligations so that they can take a certain amount of classes without leaving work. Likewise, the courses taken in the Master of Economics and Finance at the University are approved for the doctorate, which means that the student could have already taken half of the program.
In such a context, with the news given by the Ministry of National Education, EAFIT is looking forward to offering this program that consolidates the objective of becoming a teaching-research university and strengthens one of its newest programs since the school of Economics and Finance was created in 2012.
Research lines
Candidates to a doctorate in Economics at EAFIT will be able to focus on several fields of research. Gustavo Canavire Bacarreza, head of the Center for Research on Economics and Finance (Cief) at EAFIT, explains that the current supporting lines of this training are financial markets, corporate finance, public policies, macroeconomics, spatial economics, and industrial organization.
Gustavo also thinks that the registry granted by the Ministry acknowledges the research work of the University in those lines and he expects that the new program will strengthen the quantity and quality of the scientific production in this field.
For more information contact:
Alejandro Gómez Valencia
Journalist -EAFIT Information and Press Department
Telephone: (574) 2619500 Ext. 9931