Roman Vasiliev – Professor, Head of Department of Information Systems Strategic Management, Faculty of Business Informatics, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
Address: 20, Myasnitskaya str., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation.
E-mail: rvasiliev@hse.ru

Galina Levochkina – Associate Professor, Department of Information Systems Strategic Management, Faculty of Business Informatics, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
Address: 20, Myasnitskaya str., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation.
E-mail: glevochkina@hse.ru

To develop and implement methodological, technological and technical IT solutions reflecting the demands of enterprises and organizations and aimed at achieving their business goals, the market needs specialists equally knowledgeable and highly qualified in informatics, IT, economics and management. Such specialists are trained within the Business Informatics educational programs. The students of this program demonstrate the knowledge and competences they have acquired when defending their thesis for MA in Business Informatics. A Master’s thesis must comply with certain standards, which is impossible without carrying out thorough analysis of the quality of papers submitted earlier and making corrections to the thesis development process.

The article targets the following objectives: to define the requirements and evaluation criteria for Master's thesis in Business Informatics and propose methods of assessing the quality of the work; to apply these criteria to the papers submitted at the Department of Information systems strategic management, Higher School of Economics; to propose solutions allowing to improve the quality of Master’s theses submitted.

In order to achieve these objectives, the authors use the methods of classification, analysis and synthesis, etc. The information basis of the research includes regulatory documents defining diploma preparation and defense of Master’s theses at the Faculty of Business Informatics in HSE, as well as the archive of diploma which had been submitted to the department during 2006 – 2012.

The paper identifies the requirements and evaluation criteria for the Master’s theses in Business Informatics. Based on these criteria, the authors conducted an analysis of the quality of diploma papers submitted to the Department of Information systems strategic management. The analysis resulted in developing propositions allowing to improve the process of building up the competences necessary for furthering a quality Master’s theses.