CERGE-EI Foundation's Distance Learning Program (DLP) offers a variety of bachelor-level courses to universities throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, in alignment with its mission to strengthen economics education across the region. Launched in Spring 2020 with four courses and four partner institutions, the program has steadily expanded. Presently, we live-stream courses to over fifteen institutions spanning ten countries every semester.
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The objective of DLP is to provide courses which could be difficult for many institutions to offer, either because of insufficient student demand or because of a shortage of faculty with relevant expertise. Among our most popular courses are Behavioral Economics, Development Economics, Environmental Economics, Innovation Economics, and International Trade.
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The EU-based faculty (main instructors) are western-qualified and teach DLP courses online in English. They are supported by faculty or PhD students at participating institutions (local instructors): a longer-term objective of the project is to aid local capacity-building. We enrich the DLP experience by offering insightful webinars featuring distinguished speakers.
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The simultaneous participation of several universities fosters interaction between students in different countries, enables students to experience an international classroom in a home environment, and allows institutions to participate regardless of their enrollment numbers.
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Each DLP course has a cost of $4,000. Thanks to the generosity of our donors, we have been able to provide these courses free of charge to participating institutions. The Foundation continues to actively seek additional donations to sustain and expand this model. At the same time, to ensure long-term sustainability, we anticipate gradually introducing a more strategic approach to awarding grant-funded courses and offering universities the option to co-finance or directly cover the cost of selected courses. This combination will allow us to extend opportunities to more institutions while strengthening local commitment.
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In Fall 2024, the CERGE-EI Foundation, in partnership with the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, expanded the Distance Learning Program into a new project co-financed by Visegrad+ Grants from the International Visegrad Fund. The project aims to develop localized course materials, with regional instructors contextualizing content for students at partner institutions, supported by CERGE-EI mentors.
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