INTRODUCTION

The Faculty of Economics has been offering courses since 1972, the founding year of the athenaeum of Arcavacata. The Faculty has grown rapidly over the years both in the number of students enrolled and the courses on offer, with teaching subjects which range from theoretical to applied economics, to sociology, law, management, computer science, statistics and to demographics. This growth, which has been a response to the territorial demand for university level education, has been accompanied by a continuous reassessment and reorganisation of the didactic services. This has resulted in an ever increasing standard of quality.
The Faculty offers six first level degree courses (three-year degrees): Economic and Social Disciplines, Economics, Business Economics, Quantitative Methods for Economics and Business Management, Tourism (an interfaculty degree course in collaboration with the Humanities Faculty), Territorial and Construction Estimative Geological-Topographical-Cartographic Studies (an interfaculty degree in collaboration with the Faculties of Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences, and Engineering). It also offers second level specialist degree courses: Economic and Company Law, Economic and Social Disciplines for Development and Cooperation, Applied Economics, Business Economics, Economic and Financial Statistics, Enhancement of Tourist-Cultural Systems. In the academic year 2006/07, the five-year, single-cycle specialist degree course (Magistral Degree) in Juisprudence started.
Internationalisation is important in the Faculty of Economics – in research and didactics - through the exchange of students and teachers with foreign universities. UNICAL has signed agreements with the universities of Nizhni Novgorod (Russia), Bochum (Germany), Roskilde (Denmark) and Brno (Slovakia). More recently there have been initial agreements with the Canadian universities of North York, Toronto and Waterloo and with the American university of Parkside (Wisconsin). Talks are also in progress for the realisation of partnerships with the Tunisian university of Gafsa, the Brazilian university of Bahia and the Bulgarian university of Svishtov, as well as with some Chinese Universities.
The faculty participates in the following exchange progammes:
- Socrates/Erasmus Programme (open to all the students of the Faculty);
- Double degree Programmes. The Faculty has established agreements with the University of Nizhni Novgorod “Lobachevski”, the University of Bocum (Fachhochschule Fachberich Wirtschaft) in Germany, the University of Brno (Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry) and the University of Ostrava (Vysoka Skola Banska-Technicka University Ostrava) in the Czech Republic, and the University of Nitra (Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra) in the Slovak Republic. These agreements allow the students enrolled in the Faculty of Economics to participate in exchange programmes aimed at the attainment of two degrees. One degree qualification released by the student’s home university and one from the host university.
Students of the Faculty can use the Inter-departmental Library - “E. Tarantelli”. It is a modern completely automated library with a large collection of books. The Faculty has a statistics-computer laboratory, didactics computer laboratories and a training office. The Faculty’s website, http://www.economia.unical.it, has a “students' Portal” which students can use to get information from. Over the last few years the Faculty has started several postgraduate and PhD courses. It has also collaborated with other Italian universities.
Due to the standard of the services offered, the favourable student/teacher ratio, the high number of graduated students and for the high quality of research, the Faculty has always occupied a high position in the yearly Italian university league tables that Censis publishes in collaboration with the daily newspaper “La Repubblica”.

The Dean
Prof. Franco Rubino