Abstract:

During the Soviet era and while Karimov was president, Uzbekistan had the smallest percentage of secondary school students continuing on to higher education of all of the fifteen republics. Karimov emphasized, instead, specialized secondary schools. Under Mirziyoyev, the proportion of secondary school students attending higher education has increased substantially, in part because private higher education institutions were permitted by a change in the law in higher education in 2020. Estimates are that 65 to 80 such institutions have opened.

However, since the change is so recent, none of the new institutions has had a graduating class and therefore none can provide proof of quality by graduates being employed or getting into graduate schools. So how does a prospective student choose what institution to apply to, particularly when many of the new institutions offer similar courses (business and IT) and many of them offer those courses in English? Tuition and location are two reasons.

Another reason is that a new institution has a partnership with a foreign institution, usually British, that either validates the institution’s courses or allows the Uzbek institution to offer its courses on a franchise basis. Among the new institutions with British partners are British Management University (University of Reading for the foundations course and Queen Margaret University for undergraduate classes); the International Digital University (Wolverhampton University), TEAM University (London South Bank University), and the University of Digital Economics and Agrotechnologies (Coventry University). Using a combination of interviews and website data, this research will explore the uses of the British partner universities as markers of quality for new Uzbek universities.