The Estonian IT College
The Estonian Information Technology College is the leading IT institution of applied higher education in Estonia. What makes the IT College special is its academic staff that are all professionals in the field – a third of all of the lecturers come from IT firms and company or state IT departments. The strengths of Estonian IT College are based on years of educational and development work using our network of highly educated and experienced specialists of Estonian ICT industry, third sector, and academic world. To provide well-balanced knowledge-based teaching and practice-oriented training, IT College works very closely together with both founder universities as well as with ICT industry in Estonia. Good neighbors of Estonian IT College are Tallinn University of Technology and Tallinn Technology Park Tehnopol. The education in IT College is enriched through international cooperation and networking with more than twenty higher education partners in different European countries.
Mission
The College`s mission is to offer the best applied IT education in the region, bringing together high-tech know-how and the practical needs of the information society while being the axis of its development. Estonian IT College is a private non-profit higher educational institution (UAS – University of Applied Sciences), established in 2000 and owned by the Estonian Information Technology Foundation (EITF). Founders of EITF demonstrate unique public-private partnership in country – they state, represented by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research, two largest Estonian universities – Tallinn University of Technology and Tartu University, and private sector, represented by Estonian Telecom and Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
Foundation and collaboration
The owner of the IT College, the Estonian Information Technology Foundation, was established by the Republic of Estonia (represented by the Ministry of Education and Research), the University of Tartu, the Tallinn University of Technology, AS Eesti Telekom, and the Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications. The major sponsors of the College are SPSS, Sybase, Swedbank, the Swedish Business Development Agency NUTEK, Oracle, and Microsoft, but also TeliaSonera. The College receives significant contributions from Hewlett-Packard, Elion, Cisco Systems and EMT. The co-operation with Cisco Systems, Microsoft, and Oracle involves the international certification programmes Cisco Network Academy (CCNP and CCNA), Microsoft IT Academy and MSDN AA and Oracle Academic Initiative. The Estonian Information Technology Foundation (EITF) aims are to assist in the preparation of the highly qualified IT specialists and to support information and communication technology-related development in Estonia. For these purposes, the Foundation established and managed the Estonian IT College and administers the National Support Program for ICT in Higher Education “Tiger University.”