Teaching Fellows
Career Integration Fellowships - How to Apply
The application window for fellowships beginning in the 2024-2025 academic year passed on 15 April 2024. We anticipate the next round, for fellowships beginning in the 2025-2026 academic year, to be announced in early 2025.
Email queries should be directed to teaching.fellows@cerge-ei-foundation.org
Passion and commitment:
CERGE-EI Foundation Teaching Fellows
The CERGE-EI Foundation Teaching Fellows are committed young professionals who have returned to Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to teach modern, market-based economics to the next generation. Some pursue full-time academic careers as Career Integration Fellows (CIFs), while others, as Graduate Teaching Fellows (GTFs), teach part-time while completing their PhDs or working in the public or private sector. All Fellows have received graduate training from leading Western universities and form a supportive community, navigating the challenges of their local environments together.
The drivers of change
Economics education remains one of the least reformed areas in the post-communist world. At many institutions, professors earn salaries below the poverty line, forcing them to take on multiple jobs. Teaching materials are outdated, and opportunities for professional development are scarce. As a result, poor instruction leaves future voters and leaders with limited understanding of how free markets function or their underlying logic. This deprives young people of a quality education that fosters critical thinking about the challenges their societies face, ultimately hindering prospects for greater openness, growth, and prosperity in this vital region.
A very real impact
Since the program's inception in 2007, CERGE-EI Foundation Teaching Fellows have taught:
The vast majority of students attended principles of economics or other basic courses, many being exposed for the first time to the organizing concepts that have been developed to understand and promote the past 250 years of western economic growth.