
Given Georgia’s dysfunctional educational sector, it is impressive how many Georgians excel intellectually. For example, ISET regularly sends some of its graduates to the best Ph.D. programs in the world, proving that many Georgians succeed in realizing their intellectual potentials despite unfavorable conditions. At the same time, we notice that a considerable share of students who get enrolled at ISET are not well-endowed with essential knowledge and competencies, lacking, for example, presentation skills, writing proficiency, and resourcefulness in discussion and argumentation.

Nobel-winning economist James Heckman proclaimed that “the data speak for itself” after he carried out an experiment known as the 'Perry pre-School Project' and discovered that investing in high-quality preschool education brings returns of around 14 percent – a rate of return that is much higher than standard returns on stock market equity (7.2 percent).

Listening to discussions in professional circles and among policymakers, one can easily notice that the topic of energy security is often used as a reason to justify certain decisions or point out the problems existing in the sector. Energy security is frequently associated with energy “independence” – a condition that only a few countries in the world can claim to have achieved.

On February 20, ISET students delivered yet another policy seminar. The seminar was opened by Eric Livny, the president of ISET, who delivered an inspirational speech regarding the jobs of the future. He posed the question, “In this rapidly changing world, what do we need to teach schoolchildren today so that their skills and knowledge are still relevant ten or twenty years from now?”.

In recent years, a tendency on the part of different authorities to consolidate has been noted worldwide. Competition agencies are merging with consumer protection agencies and/or regulators in order to establish more effective and less expensive public systems. Accordingly, since the first roundtable meeting on the optimal design of a competition agency, held in February 2003, OECD has organized two more roundtables concerning changes in the institutional design of competition authorities in less than one year – one in December 2014, and one in June 2015.