CEU LEGS RANKING FIRST

Lidove noviny, one of the prominent newspapers in the Czech Republic, released an article about the standing of law faculties in Central Europe.

For the purpose of the article, the newspaper requested selected universities for submission of particular data. The following law faculties were assessed: Central European University from Hungary, Ludwig Maximilian University and Humboldt University from Germany, Vienna University from Austria, law faculties at universities in Warsaw and Krakow from Poland, Komensky University and University of Pavel Josef Safarik from Slovakia, and Charles University in Prague, Masaryk University in Brno, Palacky University in Olomouc and Law faculties in Pilsner and Karlovy Vary Law from the Czech Republic.

Soros’s elite university ended up the first in the ranking. Small, elite and expensive Central European University, established by George Soros, is academically the most productive. Its international team consists of excellent scholars and as a school of an American type it tracks the career of its graduates.

The survey focused on publications released in 2009. In that year, 14 academics from Budapest Department of Legal Studies headed by Professor Stefan Messmann, released 37 publications whereas some of them were prestigious. The academics from CEU contributed to two Oxford books (on the rule of law and on unfair banking practices) and published also in Minnesota journal on international law. CEU’s Center for Ethics and Law in Biomedicine (CELAB), belonging to the best of its kind, undertook a research regarding regulations of the so-called bio-banks, which store genetic specimens.

The team is very young; two academics with less than 40 years old have titles corresponding to the Czech title ‘docent’ (assistant professor) whereas three CEU scholars with less than 50 years are professors.

60 students attend the Legal Studies Department who are seeking to earn Master of Laws, Master of Art and Doctor of Juridical Science degree. Thus, there are about four or five teachers per student which is exceptionally positive. Students pay 12,000 euro per year which is about 267 thousand CZK. Yet, the University assures on its webpage that 80 % of the students are granted scholarships. CEU selects 16 % of the applicants whereas about three quarters of them eventually enroll for the respective programs. Together with the Masaryk University, it is one of the two universities in the region that makes a survey among is alumnus. The results from 2009 unfortunately do not distinguish between law and other graduates (FYI: 63 % of the graduates work, 15 % of them pursues other studies. The initial wages of CEU graduates are not astonishing; the half of them earns in the range between 7,200 and 14,400 euro a year. It might be due to the fact that one half of all the students eventually end up in the domain of non-governmental organizations and academic field.)

 /Full and Original Version of the article can be found in Czech, at http://www.lidovky.cz/nejlepsi-fakulta-ve-stredni-evrope-duj-/ln_noviny.asp?c=A110221_000115_ln_noviny_sko&klic=241450&mes=110221_0. Many thanks to Peter Sprinz, IBL LLM Candidate for translation /