Irkutsk State University was founded almost 100 years ago, and it gave the impulse toward the development of higher education system in Siberia and Russian Far East. Irkutsk State University became the major educational, scientific and cultural center on the vast territory of Eastern Siberia at once. At first, there were only two faculties - the Faculty of History and Philology and the Law Faculty, and 600 students enrolled.
Nowadays Irkutsk State University is a large scientific and educational institution training students in humanities, natural, technical and applied sciences. ISU facilities include 8 institutes and 10 faculties.
Among other facilities there should be named three research institutes (the Research Institute of Applied Physics, Research Institute of Biology and Research Institute of Oil and Coal Chemical Synthesis), the Center for Advanced Information Technologies, the Astronomical observatory, the Botanic garden, the Scientific library that is one of the largest University libraries in Russia, the Center for Social Innovations, and seven Dissertation councils. Five ISU academic journals are included into the special list approved by the State commission for academic degree and titles.
ISU offers bachelor, master, post-graduate programs for more than 13 000 students that have opportunity to specialize under the supervision of world-known scientists. For decades, Irkutsk University has trained more than 100 thousand highly qualified specialists, among them citizens of Mongolia, China, African and Arab countries. At present, there are more 650 international students from 30 countries.
ISU is famous for its fundamental research in different spheres. Physicists of the Irkutsk State University won the large grant to construct the telescope Tunka-HiSCORE. Currently 35 projects are conducted under the support of the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research and the Russian Fund for Humanities.
Irkutsk State University is aimed at developing long-term cooperation with foreign partners that in many cases results in joint educational or double degree programs. For more than 20 years the Siberian-American Faculty of Management of the Baikal International Business School has collaborated with the University of Maryland (USA) and University of Southern Queensland (Australia). The ISU International Institute of Economics and Linguistics conducts a double-degree program in a partnership with Liaoning University (China). In 2012 ISU and the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (Germany) signed an agreement to start a double degree program in the field of Ecology and Environmental Management. In 2014 ISU joined the consortium of Universities headed by the University of Hokkaido to develop “East Russia–Japan Expert Education Program”. There have also been concluded special agreements on academic exchange and master and bachelor double degree programs with the University of Savoy Mont Blanc (France) and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland).