About Us

  • Rezekne Higher Education Institution (RHEI) birthday is on the 1st of July 1993.
  • RHEI was established on the base of the University of Latvia and Riga Technical University, but traditions of higher education have existed in Rezekne since the period of the independence of Latvia (1918–1940), when Rezekne Pedagogical School (1922), later Rezekne Teacher Training Institute (1925–1944) began its work.
  • The number of students in academic year 1993–1994 was 547, in academic year 2013-2014 – 1818.
  • The number of employees in academic year 1993–1994 was 134, 81 of them were academic staff, but in academic year 2013-2014 – 258 employees, 148 of them – academic staff.
  • RHEI structure: 4 faculties – Faculty of Economics and Management, Faculty of Humanities and Law, Faculty of Engineering (founded in 1993), Faculty of Education and Design (founded in 1995, restructuring Rezekne Pedagogical School), 2 institutes: Personality Socialization Research Institute and Institute of Regionalistics (founded in 2006), centres, laboratories and other service units.
  • In academic year 2013–2014 there are 39 study programs: 21 basic, 15 higher level, 3 doctoral programs.
  • The number of graduates by 2013 has reached 9293.
  • RHEI has more than 150 partners abroad; high rates of students and academic staff mobility (on average the 2nd–the 3rd place among all higher education institutions of Latvia).

The aim of RHEI is to provide academic and professional higher education in compliance with the science development level and cultural traditions of Latvia being competitive in the European education space; to develop culture, science and education in Latgale region and thus in the whole Latvia. In order to ascertain development prospects, RHEI takes part in the development of all major strategic documents: “Latgale Programme 2007–2017”and “Latgale Strategy 2030”.

With increasing role of regional higher education institutions in the context of Latvia and European Union, it is important to develop an active scientific environment in each region. In Latgale region due to its social and regional peculiarities there has been located rarely used polychronic array of spiritual and material values. Its popularization, especially activated by the launch of conferences on Latgalistics, enables to realize and solve topical discourses in humanities and social sciences such as culture continuity, polychronism, territorial identity, Regionalistics, utilization of local resources etc. Students actively participate both in organization of conferences, acquiring certain administration skills, as well as present their research as emerging scientists.

RHEI plays a significant role in the region’s sustainability, which is closely related to municipality development perspective in order to facilitate smooth, polycentric regional development at national and EU level, solving the problems typical for a border region and ensuring the measures, which will increase EU external border’s attractiveness and maintenance of human resources.