Georgia's education system seems to be broken. It is no longer corrupt, which is good, but it does not deliver the quality that we all want and need. Our teachers are among the lowest paid in Georgia and in the world. Quality is an issue at all levels of education, starting with preschools and ending with graduate and post-graduate education.

ISET is proud to welcome Professor Avner Shaked, a regular visiting scholar and a member of our International Faculty Committee. This year Prof. Shaked will teach a Game Theory class in the first year of our Economics MA program, and Industrial Organization (IO) in the second year.

Mr. Livny chose to devote his TEDx talk to the challenge of bringing education and light to Georgia’s remote villages. He told the story of Dzevri, a tiny village in Imereti, which used the help of an American couple, Cathy McLain and Roy Southworth, to revolutionize the local school. In just three years, college enrolment for local school graduates went from zero to almost 100%.

Nino Kakulia was born in Samtredia on 15 October 1991, in the last days of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. By the time Nino and independent Georgia were celebrating their 13th birthdays, the Georgian government embarked on a series of long-overdue reforms, one of which was about cleansing the country’s higher education system from corruption.

ISET is proud to welcome Maria De Paola, a visiting professor working at the Department of Economics, Statistics and Finance at the University of Calabria in Italy. Currently an Associate Professor of Economics, Maria obtained her PhD in Economics from the University of Rome.