Business capital gets its economics school at Mumbai University

Business capital gets its economics school at Mumbai University

The country's oldest economics department is being rechristened. Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy, as it will be called, is also increasing its course offerings.

From data science and policy analytics to applied economics, from quantitative finance to policy research, what started off in 1921 as one of the departments of the Mumbai University, will soon be a full-fledged school.

Informally known as the Bombay School of Economics, the university's management council on Tuesday approved the new name of the school. In a run up to its centenary, the Mumbai School of Economics (MSE) will also receive a special grant from the state government to hire faculty, offer a wider range of programmes and act as a policy consultant to the state government.

"The school needs to retain meaningfulness and relevance in the changing environment through research and training," said director Neeraj Hatekar. Hence, the schools will have four centres, in addition to its flagship course, the MA-economics and the PhD programmes. "We will set up a centre for applied economic research and training, a centre for public policy, a centre for data sciences and policy analytics and a centre for quantitative finance," added Hatekar.

The school will have a common pool of research and administrative staff. In 2005-06 after getting autonomy, the department has seen little attention from the state government and the university. That is reflected from the fact that while the total approved faculty strength is 30, only 14 posts have been filled, the rest remain vacant. Currently, only the credit-based MA course in economics is offered, apart from a few other diploma and certificate courses.

The centre for applied economics research and training will host an MA programme in applied economics and short-term courses for practitioners and students. It will also offer courses touching aspects such as urban policy, public economics and experimental and computational social science. The public policy centre will work closely with the state government to review Maharashtra's policy design from time to time. "The centre will also work with the department of tribal development. Collaborations will be worked out with University of California, Berkeley, Cambridge and Chicago University," added Hatekar.

Not leaving big data, the flavor of the decade, the centre for data sciences and policy analytics will offer a masters in data science and analytics in collaboration with the National Institute of Securities Markets and training programmes in analytics and big data for policy makers. With the new centres coming up, a total of 1000-plus students will be trained each year.

Source | Times of India | 15 March 2017

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