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- Convenor:
-
Martha Merrill
(Kent State University)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Alan DeYoung
(University of Kentucky)
- Discussant:
-
Alan DeYoung
(University of Kentucky)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Theme:
- Education
- Location:
- GA 1106
- Sessions:
- Saturday 22 October, -
Time zone: America/Indiana/Knox
:
Access to education can be conceived of in multiple ways. Our panel considers parental choice of schools and the legal authorizations of higher education institutions to operate in Uzbekistan and the role of social stratification in educational access in Kazakhstan.
Abstract:
Access to education can be conceived of in multiple ways. In our panel, we will look at access to education in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan from three different levels.
Christopher Whitsel takes a micro-level approach, following up on his earlier research on parental choice of schools in Dushanbe and in eight cities in Kazakhstan with new research on parental choice in Tashkent. Preliminary analysis shows that in Tashkent, as in Dushanbe and in Kazakhstan, parents are interested in STEM education, and in looking at private schools, they consider both facilities and extra-curricular activities. Martha Merrill and Shakhnoza Yakubova, while also studying Uzbekistan, turn the focus to the state level, to higher education, and to the institutions themselves. They explore the legal authorizations for both International Branch Campuses and the newly-permitted private universities to operate. Both add access options to a system with many more applicants than places. In the case of the IBCs, although all focus on career and professional education, other aspects of their authorizations show considerable variation. Initial consideration of one private university authorization reveals an emphasis on international linkages. Elise Ahn moves the discussion to Kazakhstan and to a more abstract level as she considers multidimensionality in thinking about emerging social stratification and its connection to education access in Kazakhstan.
Access, then, is more complex than simply opening doors and adding places to existing institutions. Multiple constituencies have multiple agendas, all of which influence the ability of school children and university students to learn and to have diverse contexts in which to do so.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 22 October, 2022, -Martha Merrill (Kent State University) Shakhnoza Yakubova (Kent State University)
Paper abstract:
Comparative educators are interested in how and why education systems change, and particularly why actors in different systems make different choices – or similar choices. The collapse of the Soviet Union has provided comparative educators with an unprecedented opportunity to study changes and their causes: in 1991, all 15 of the nations that then were Soviet republics all had the same higher education system, and thirty years later, in 2022, they all have different systems. Uzbekistan is a particularly interesting case, because from 1991 to 2016, it was ruled by a repressive dictator, Islam Karimov, who limited access to higher education and emphasized specialized secondary education. His successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, while proceeding cautiously with political liberalization, understands that attracting foreign investment to provide jobs for Uzbekistan’s huge youth population (40% of the population of 31 million is 24 or younger – CIA World Factbook, 2020) is essential (Anceschi, 2018; Gong, 2020; Ruiz-Ramas and Hernandez, 2021). Mirziyoyev also understands that the jobs of the future require more than secondary education, and thus he is interested in higher education reform, including international branch campuses (the numbers have leaped from 7 to 21 in the five and a half years since Karimov died) and new private universities – both quicker ways of initiating change than reforming existing universities. While authors have studied the new international branch campuses (Celeti et al, 2019; Chankseliani, 2020; Merrill and Yakubova, 2021 and 2022; Mirkasimov et al, 2021; Ubaydullaeva, 2020), no scholarly works have been published in English that specifically analyze the processes needed for institutional authorization, and none have addressed the new domestic start-ups, including TEAM University (https://teamuni.uz/ ) and the International Digital University (https://www.idu.uz/ ).
The research methods are both document analysis and interviews with faculty and administrators who have been involved in the start-up process. Document analysis reveals that in the case of five South Korean IBCs, although all focus on career and professional education, other aspects of their authorizations, such as financing and governance, show considerable variation. Initial consideration of one private university authorization reveals an emphasis on international linkages. Interviews are planned for June 2022.
Chris Whitsel (North Dakota State University)
Paper abstract:
In the past 25 years many types of public and private schools have been established in Uzbekistan creating an educational market. While there were educational choices available to parents’ in the Soviet Union, the educational market is much more highly developed. Research on Parents’ Choices and Educational Market in Dushanbe, Tajikistan (Whitsel, 2014), eight cities in Kazakhstan (Whitsel, 2020) and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (Abdoubateva, 2019) show strong similarities in what parents’ value.
This paper extends the scholarship by analyzing interviews with parents who also work as teachers. This paper will be based on interviews with parents conducted in Tashkent Spring of 2022. Preliminary analysis indicates that teachers share similar preferences as other parents in school location. In conducting research about schools teachers often visit schools in their neighborhood to gain first-hand information. Similar to other parents, teachers also value mathematics and sciences over humanities subjects. Teachers choosing private schools look both at the quality of the classrooms, as well as value the extracurricular activities available.
Elise Ahn (UW-Madison) Juldyz Smagulova (KIMEP University)
Paper abstract:
In the last 30 years, Almaty has been undergoing urbanization due to internal emigration, regional immigration, suburbanization, and major changes in the population’s economic activities. While Kazakhstan has discursively pursued numerous (and operationalized some) reform priorities since 1991, concomitantly, ongoing protests have demonstrated broader social discontent with the lack of depth and breadth of the reforms. This received global attention recently with the events of January 2022, with the media discourse focusing on the ever-widening socio-economic gaps throughout the country. At the macro-level, this is seen by trends in its Gini coefficient, which measures overall social inequality. Kazakhstan’s Gini coefficient decreased from 0.41 (2001) to 0.29 (2009) (World Bank, 2012) with that downward trend continuing until 2015. However, since 2016, it has been trending upward to 0.278 (2018). At a micro-level, pre-existing disparities between different populations have become more apparent and new patterns of social and spatial inequality have been emerging.
This paper will be building on a survey that was first conducted in 2014–2015 across 29 schools and distributed among 2,952 secondary students. The authors concluded in subsequent papers that although the results of the survey were not generalizable, associative relationships emerged in relation to gender, family structure, and district (school location) to issues of education access and broader social (in)equity. The objective of this paper is to further examine the way education both captures and fosters socioeconomic stratification due to the bevy of values and aims that are, to some extent, paradoxical, e.g., promoting and privileging one nationality over others while promoting a cohesive civic identity and promoting social integration and provide a more robust conceptual framework for the study.
More broadly, in the Kazakhstani context, education research in and on post-Soviet Kazakhstani context has and continues to focus primarily on the challenges and changes in macro-level policy and planning processes, e.g., the role of donor agencies in the development of its education system after independence, teacher reform, with a particular emphasis on higher education. Thus, the aim of this project is to examine micro-level attributes that could serve as everyday indicators for socioeconomic status and by extension, which could provide insight into growing socioeconomic stratification in Kazakhstan.