SPOTLIGHT ON SCHOOLS
Situated at a crossroad of continents within Bulgaria’s oldest university, the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at Sofia University teaches in four different languages. Tim Banerjee Dhoul offers an introduction to the institution and the MBA programmes for which it has secured AMBA accreditation
HISTORY Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski is the oldest institution of higher education in Bulgaria. It was founded as the School of Higher Education in 1888, 10 years after Bulgaria’s re-establishment as a state (commemorated as the Liberation of Bulgaria). It was renamed Sofia University in 1904. The teaching of economics and finance began through the university’s department (and later, faculty) of law in 1892. The Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences was subsequently established in 1944, before being separated from the wider university and transformed into the Higher Institute of Economics Karl Marx in 1951. It returned to the structure of Sofia University as the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration (FEBA) some 40 years later and is now one of the institution’s 16 faculties.
COURSES FEBA offers degree programmes in four different languages, but has secured
AMBA accreditation for its English-language MBA programmes. These are available with three different specialisations: strategic management, human resource management and management information systems. The MBAs can be completed in either a year and a half, or two years, depending on a student’s background and experience on joining the programme and culminate with the presentation of a master’s thesis. In total, FEBA runs more than 30 master’s degrees in both Bulgarian and English. The school also has eight PhD and three bachelor’s programmes, with courses for the latter available in English, French and German.
LOCATION Sofia University is based in the capital of Bulgaria, in Southeast Europe. Sofia is the EU member state’s largest city and is home to more than one million people, as well as many of the country’s principal cultural institutions and commercial companies. The city is particularly known for the strength of its IT industry and was once named among the top 10 cities for start-ups by Forbes .
34 | Ambition OCTOBER 2023
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