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- Convenor:
-
Martha Merrill
(Kent State University)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Pakiza Shirinova
(Kent State University)
- Discussant:
-
Barbara Junisbai
(Pitzer College)
- Format:
- Panel
- Theme:
- Education
- Location:
- Lawrence Hall: room 205
- Sessions:
- Saturday 21 October, -
Time zone: America/New_York
Abstract:
In 1991, Central Asian nations became independent. Each needed to reform its education system. Thirty years later, some of the attempted reforms have had unintended consequences.
Martha Merrill examines the new private domestic universities in Uzbekistan. They are meant to increase access, since 40% of the population is under 24. However, many were established by wealthy business people who do not fully understand academia. Most emphasize business and IT, teach in English, are located in Tashkent, and charge very high tuition. Thus the goal of increasing access is not attained.
Ali Ait Si Mhamed researched a proposed reform in Kazakhstan. Titled “per-capita per-credit” funding, its goals are to strengthen outcomes-oriented budgeting, enhance student choice, and increase competition between universities. University funding would be allocated by the number of credits a student takes each term. However, university leaders expressed concerns about the policy, including the sufficiency of funding and the need for new internal processes. They suggested that the policy could create new problems.
Chynarkul Ryskulova investigates the private accreditation processes in Kyrgyzstan, initiated in 2016. Five independent agencies, all of which accredit all kinds of programs, now are active. Private accreditation has led to a number of new problems, such as agencies bidding on the work at public universities and insufficiently-trained reviewers who can not be qualified in all disciplines. Moreover, quality is considered a function for external evaluators. Creating what in the European Higher Education Area is called an internal “quality culture” has not been achieved.
Mir Afzal Tajik and colleagues studied the challenges that graduate students in Kazakhstan encounter in English Medium of Instruction programs. Data were collected from students, professors, and program directors at 10 public and private universities in five cities. Students reported that they were dissatisfied with their academic English, experienced low confidence and anxiety in making presentations in English, enjoyed using English less than either Russian or Kazakh, and had concerns about their reading and writing skills. Implications for macro-level policy designers are suggested.
Christopher Whitsel explores the educational attainment of Russians in Central Asia. Considering household data compiled by UNICEF for the years 1991 to 2006 and then re-analyzed by himself and colleagues, he finds that in both compulsory (primary and secondary) and higher education, Russian minorities have lower educational attainment than the Central Asian majority members.
Each of our papers describes a solution that has, in turn, created new problems.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 21 October, 2023, -Paper abstract:
Martha Merrill examines the new domestic private universities (DPU) in Uzbekistan, permitted by a change in the Law on Education in 2020. The DPU, like the International Branch Campuses (IBCs) created, with government permission, by foreign nations, are encouraged by Shavkat Mirziyoyev. Mirziyoyev became President of Uzbekistan in December 2016, following the death of Islam Karimov. Karimov had emphasized specialized secondary education and had limited enrollments in higher education. Since 40% of the population of Uzbekistan in 2022 was under 24 (CIA World Factbook), and NEET youth (Not in Employment, Education, or Training) can cause instability, quickly establishing new universities, as well as new employment opportunities, became a priority for the Mirziyoyev government.
However, the DPU were most often initiated by wealthy business people who did not understand academic staffing, policy, and financing requirements, and, as several interviewees reported, expected to be making a profit in a year or two. For example, interviewees said, the founders appreciated the need for a few top administrators and for professors, but few grasped precisely what a registrar does or what kind of staffing a library requires. In addition, having themselves studied in institutions with policies handed down from Ministries, most founders were not prepared for the myriad of policy decisions that independent institutions have to make. One interviewee mentioned asking a colleague how he was deciding what to put on a university website; the colleague pulled out a file folder with hand-written materials staff had given him. In effect, there was no policy; he was simply posting whatever he was given.
Given the backgrounds and goals of the founders, most of the DPU focus on business and IT subjects, teach in English, are located in Tashkent, and charge very high tuition. Several interviewees stated that this market is already saturated and that alternatives were needed. One interviewee suggested teaching in Uzbek, and another advocated going out to the regions, where the facilities of former specialized secondary schools lie empty. However, many of the DPU, with no track records or graduating classes, are using partnerships with British universities and content validated by them as a mechanism of proclaiming quality. To maintain these international relationships, they must have programs taught in English.
The new domestic private universities, therefore, currently are serving a limited segment of society. Thus the goal of increasing access to higher education is not achieved.
Paper abstract:
Policy implementation research suggests that the likelihood of policy success, i.e. matching policy outcomes with expectations, can be best assessed by engaging the bottom-up perspectives of those who will implement the policy. This presentation works from this premise and examines the views of university leaders in Kazakhstan on the potential impact of a per capita per credit higher education funding model proposed for implementation at their universities. According to this policy, the government’s funding to universities would be allocated based on the number of academic credits students acquire in a semester. Linking funding to individual academic progression should enable students to build their education trajectories and choose the professors and courses they take at the same time. It is hoped that the per capita per credit funding approach would introduce flexibility into the higher education system, benefiting students and stimulating university development. Applying resources for a policy implementation perspective, this presentation discusses concerns associated with the implementation of the proposed model. Resources that need to be considered when planning for funding reform go beyond financial means and also include competent employees to implement the policy, political support for the policy, and time for the effects of the policy to take place. The evidence in this presentation comes from 11 semi-structured qualitative interviews with representatives of rectorates at nine universities in Kazakhstan. Face-to-face interviews took place from February to June 2019. The universities represented in this paper were purposefully selected to reflect the diversity of the higher education system in Kazakhstan, characterized by differences in size, status, location, and ministerial oversight. The decision to interview university administrators at the highest level was driven by the hierarchical nature of higher education governance in Kazakhstan. The findings suggest that the match between the policy expectations and the goal of strengthened student choice will be contingent upon the ability of universities to introduce organizational processes that enable such a choice. At some universities, this would require revising budgeting procedures, introducing course try-out policies, and advancing understanding among university personnel about how to record academic credit accumulation and transfer. This will be the area of structural and cultural change at universities. Thus, advancing the quality and competitiveness of universities will be conditioned by university access to funding and the acceptance of personnel of both structural and cultural changes associated with the implementation of the new policy.
Paper abstract:
Six years have passed since Kyrgyzstan implemented the new quality assurance system through independent accreditation agencies based on legal documents and amendments to the Law on Education in Kyrgyzstan (The Government of the KR, 2003). The National Accreditation Board of the Ministry of Education and Sciences recognized five local independent accreditation agencies and one Kazakhstani agency. Despite the fact that Accreditation of Educational Institutions aimed at quality assurance and integration into the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the accreditation process has opened new channels for corruption and led to more problems in the higher education. Since there are no specialized professional accreditation agencies in the country, all accreditation agencies accredit all kinds of programs. State HEIs choose the accreditation agency through the system of tender depending on the institution’s financial ability. For example, one agency can charge 150 thousand soms (~ $1765) for accreditation of a program, while another agency can charge 35 thousand soms (~ $410) for the same type of program accreditation. It seems that each institution negotiates with the accreditation agency the cost of the accreditation and the results of accreditation individually. There are cases when one agency did not accredit a program for not meeting the accreditation standards, but the other accreditation agency accredited it shortly thereafter.
There is no system for internal quality assurance; institutions failed to develop an institutional quality assurance policy. The absence of Institutional Research Centers does not allow HEIs to collect and analyze data about educational practices and internal quality assurance policies on a regular basis. HEIs start collecting data for accreditation just a few weeks before the accreditation site visit. The implementation of new independent accreditation has not brought expected results in improvement of quality of education and establishment of quality culture. HEIs did not create mechanisms for the continuous improvement of the quality of education, instead they perceive the independent accreditation as the same external inspection for compliance of educational programs with the State Educational Standards that takes place every five years.
The biggest problem is that accreditation has not promoted quality of education due to poor management of the accreditation process at different levels (Ministry of Education and Sciences, accreditation agencies, and HEIs), absence of Institutional Research Centers and specialized professional accreditation agencies, insufficient training of faculty and accreditation specialists, and misunderstanding of the essence of quality culture.
Paper abstract:
Recent research on trends in educational attainment has shown a pattern of growing inequality of educational attainment. Most work has focused on the loss in girls’ education or the poverty gap. This paper focuses on the differences in attainment between Russian minority population and the majority population in several Central Asian and neighboring countries.
Data used are from nationally representative household surveys collected by international organizations. Data are from either Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey collected by UNICEF, Demographic Household Surveys, collected by USAID, or the European Social Survey. All data were collected between 2015-2021. All of the data sets contained measures of educational attainment, typically the highest level attended. Each of the data sets also contain measures of ethnicity, gender, age, wealth, and rural/urban residence. Ethnicity is measured in two ways across the survey. In some surveys it is using native language and in others it is ethnicity.
Preliminary results from Central Asian countries using MICS data show an interesting picture. In most cases the Russian minority has maintained its dominance. In Uzbekistan both Uzbek and Russian speaking households are gaining specialized degrees, but in differing tracks. Russian language speakers continue to dominate in fields of higher education, compared to Uzbek speakers. Uzbek speakers in the youngest generation are attending specialized vocational training in higher percentages than Russian speakers. In Kyrgyzstan, the trend is that Russians are attending both higher Education and specialized secondary education at higher rates than their Kyrgyz peers. Similarly in Turkmenistan, Russian native speakers are also attending higher education and specialized vocational training in higher percentages than their Turkmen peers.
Only in Kazakhstan, is the trend reversed. Smaller percentages of Russians are attending higher education than Kazakhs. Instead, Russians are attending specialized vocational training in higher percentages. This trend reverses what is found in previous generations in the sample who completed higher education in larger percentages than their Kazakh peers.
Further analysis will investigate trends in neighboring countries using other datasets.