#WeAreEUCEN

PACT

Project actors capacity training in Caucasus
Project 544047-TEMPUS-1-2013-1-GE-TEMPUS-JPGR.
PACT LogoJPG 2

10 February 2015

Research and development in public and private universities remained static in the Caucasus Region (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia) in the last years. Only between 0.2% and 1% of GDP in these countries flows into research and development. In Armenia for example the state does not fund universities doing research. Thus they have to finance their research and development work with external funds. Research capacities of universities in Armenia are generally low since the main focus has been teaching. Since almost 90% of Georgian universities offer Master’s and PhD programmes, the integration of education and research is a huge topic in Georgia. There 64% of students are enrolled in the five main universities in Tbilisi. Nevertheless in Georgia research is underfunded: Only 0.18% of GDP was spent on research in 2008 and not more than 0.2% in 2009, without significant increase in following years. The majority of doctoral students self-finance their studies.

In European universities more and more work is dedicated to offering Master programmes, trainings and workshops in postgraduate departments in order to apply for international project funding. Also the EC has put enormous efforts into developing tools to support project developers and applicants in the process of developing and managing projects with an international or European scope. These tools have never been transferred to the Caucasus Region, although they offer the possibility of increasing research capacity in these countries.

The main aim of the project is to successfully transfer existing knowledge funded by the EC for project developers to the Caucasus Region and contribute to capacity building in Caucasus universities. The PACT project will collect support tools for project developers (WP 2), train project partners, young researchers, PhD students and young lecturers from AM, AZ and GE in project development (WP 3, 4, 5) and establish a Caucasus Interactive Resource Platform with adapted support tools (WP7).