VGSf - WU Vienna campus

The School

The Vi­enna Gradu­ate School of Fin­ance (VGSF) was foun­ded in 2005 as a joint ini­ti­at­ive of the In­sti­tute for Ad­vanced Stud­ies (IHS), the Uni­versity of Vi­enna, and the Vi­enna Uni­versity of Eco­nom­ics and Busi­ness (WU Vi­enna), with the fin­an­cial sup­port of the Aus­trian Science Fund (FWF).

These three in­sti­tu­tions joined forces to cre­ate a hub in Vi­enna that is large enough to pro­duce in­ter­na­tion­ally re­cog­nized re­search and provide a com­pet­it­ive PhD edu­ca­tion.

The well-­struc­tured, five-year PhD pro­gram in Fin­ance trains stu­dents to be­come am­bi­tious re­search­ers in the field of fin­ance, suit­able for place­ment at in­ter­na­tional aca­demic in­sti­tu­tions or at re­search-­friendly in­sti­tu­tions in the fin­an­cial sector. VGSF fac­ulty mem­bers con­duct re­search and teach in areas such as cor­por­ate fin­ance, fin­an­cial in­ter­me­di­ation, and mar­ket mi­cro­struc­ture, and col­lab­or­ate with renowned ex­perts and aca­dem­ics, who are often in­vited to VGSF as guest lec­tur­ers or to hold sem­inars. Rig­or­ous su­per­vi­sion and struc­tured course­work, to­gether with a stim­u­lat­ing and in­ter­na­tional en­vir­on­ment, define the char­ac­ter of the pro­gram.

In 2013, the school’s headquar­ters moved to the new cam­pus of WU Vi­enna. In 2017, an ex­ternal com­mit­tee of in­ter­na­tional re­view­ers rated the school as “ex­cel­lent” for its edu­ca­tion, re­search, im­pact, and vis­ib­il­ity. In 2018, the school suc­cess­fully ap­plied for doc.fund fund­ing provided by the FWF and was se­lec­ted from forty-five ap­plic­a­tions as one of only seven pro­grams to be­ne­fit from the fund­ing.

VGSF logos: IHS, University of Vienna, WU Vienna, FWF

Mis­sion

The VGSF mis­sion is to gen­er­ate, ex­pand, and dis­sem­in­ate know­ledge; to em­body and de­liver mean­ing­ful edu­ca­tion and re­search in the field of fin­ance.

Vi­sion

  • To be­come a lead­ing in­sti­tu­tion for scien­ti­fic re­search and edu­ca­tion world­wide
  • To train the next gen­er­a­tion of re­search­ers and aca­dem­ics
  • To provide an edu­ca­tional cur­riculum that equips stu­dents with pro­found dis­cip­lin­ary know­ledge and the prob­lem solv­ing, lead­er­ship, com­mu­nic­a­tion, and in­ter­per­sonal skills re­quired to pur­sue their am­bi­tions
  • To es­tab­lish a European center for re­search-ori­ented edu­ca­tion in fin­ance
  • To con­trib­ute to so­ci­ety through the pur­suit of edu­ca­tion, learn­ing, and re­search at the highest in­ter­na­tional levels of ex­cel­lence

Core Val­ues

  • Ex­cel­lence: to provide a com­pet­it­ive edu­ca­tion, gen­er­at­ing in­nov­at­ive and ex­em­plary re­search­ers
  • Inde­pend­ence: freedom of thought and ex­pres­sion
  • En­cour­age­ment: in­spire stu­dents to think out­side the box and to take the ini­ti­at­ive in re­search

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