Today, Kyrgyzstan swore in Almazbek Atambayev as its new President, the first peaceful transition of power in the country. Молодцы! This was an historic moment and widely reported: I liked stories on MSNBC and the ever-reliable BBC, as well as reporting by 24, a Kyrgyz news agency (in Russian). The UAE-based newspaper The Nation rightly praises the achievements of outgoing President Roza Otunbayeva.

Thus today seems a good time to continue my mini series on developments in Central Asian higher education by reflecting on the Kyrgyz higher education sector. This quote from the Asian Development Bank (2011) is a useful summary of the context:

“The country faces huge challenges in economic recovery, reconstruction, and social reconciliation. Success will not be easy given the considerable pressure on public financial resources in a weakened economy. Achieving sustainable robust economic growth remains the major challenge facing the country.”

I would identify two main trends in Kyrgyz higher education since 1991:

1. The growth of private providers offering university-level courses

This trend is not unique to Kyrgyzstan – Russia in particular has seen a massive upswing in the number of private providers since the end of everything-run-by-the-state communism. The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) estimates that Kyrgyzstan has one of the largest private funding sources in higher education in the world. This has led many commentators to claim that higher education has become a market – Slabodyanyuk even says “Временами оно даже напоминает базар. Главная цель – продать товар.” (“Sometimes they even remind of you of a bazaar. The main aim is to sell goods.”)

Often, private providers replace a gap in state funding, but in Kyrgyzstan the higher education sector has not suffered from the same cuts as in other countries: in fact, more than 20% of public expenditure goes on education (at all levels). It appears the challenges noted by the Asian Development Bank are holding the government back from achieving its goals.

This leads on to the second trend, which puts Kyrgyzstan apart from many other post-Soviet countries:

2. An emphasis on quality and participation

The country has high expectations for education and rising participation rates and overall higher education policy is oriented towards improving quality. It is the only Central Asian country to have participated in the OECD-run Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), demonstrating a commitment by the government to assessing educational levels and development at international standards. The government has also begun the process – like in Kazakhstan – of making the higher education system more compatible with the Bologna Process. However, in the 2006 PISA assessment, the country was ranked last out of 57 participating countries.

A subsequent OECD/IBRD report concludes that “there is a pressing need to modernize higher education in the Kyrgyz Republic so it can respond to the needs of a small economy for educated human capital”. The poor result of the PISA assessment must be set against the context of recent political challenges, but nevertheless indicates that the sector needs to be managed more efficiently, primarily by the Ministry of Education and Science but also by universities themselves.

Amsler has suggested that education systems in Central Asia suffer from a status of ‘global inferiority’. However, this mini report on Kyrgyz higher education suggests to me that there are some glimmers of light at the end of the tunnel, which come from the government’s commitment to making improvements. This commitment may not yet have led to the efficiency and equality of opportunity that is being strived towards, but what has happened so far is at least some progress. That is more than can be said of other post-Soviet countries.

References

Amsler, S. (2008). Higher Education Reform in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. In J. E. Canaan & W. Shumar (Eds.), Structure and Agency in the Neoliberal University. Abingdon: Routledge.

Asian Development Bank. (2011). Economic Trends and Prospects in Developing Asia:Central Asia.

National Tempus Office Kyrgyzstan. (October 2010). Higher Education in Kyrgyzstan: European Commission.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development & The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. (2010). Kyrgyz Republic 2010: Lessons from PISA.Paris: OECD.

Slabodyanyuk, N. (no date) Как выбрать университет? (How to choose a university?) http://www.inform.kg/ru/kak_vybrat_universitet/