history
Students in charge of universities and other quirks of Kazakh higher education history
Did you know that Kazakhstan’s first university was opened in Tashkent – in today’s Uzbekistan?
Or that the its first Rector (Vice-Chancellor) was a final year student?
Or that throughout the Soviet period, there was only ever one university in Kazakhstan’s capital?
All these fun (yes, they are fun!) facts and more can be found in a lighthearted new article by Andrei Mikhailov writing for Kazakhstan’s InformBureau [ru].
The article, which I’ve translated from Russian below, nicely captures the energy and novelty of formal higher education in the early Soviet period.
Lenin’s government couldn’t build institutions fast enough, so Kazakh students (that is, students living on the territory that has since become Kazakhstan) were sent to other parts of the Union, often to the fabulously named Communist Universities.
As an aside, I read an informative article about the Communist Universities earlier this week by Panin and Harlamova КОММУНИСТИЧЕСКИЕ УНИВЕРСИТЕТЫ ДЛЯ НАЦИОНАЛЬНЫХ МЕНЬШИНСТВ Панин Харламова 2012 [ru]. They were set up for “national minorities” and had two purposes: to train political workers for Soviet government work, and to train revolutionaries for other states. Teaching took place in a wide range of languages, from Finnish to Korean. These universities were a short-lived phenomenon, shut down in the second half of the 1930s after Stalin decided that the national question had been solved.
Back to Kazakhstan. Mikhailov suggests that back in the Soviet period, the lack of higher education made it a more valuable commodity than in today’s world of practically universal access to tertiary education. He notes with warm approval that the student to faculty ratio at Kazakh State University was an incredible 2:1 in its initial years, with over half of the faculty bearing Professor or Associate Professor designation. You wouldn’t get that nowadays, Mikhailov wants us to know.
Read on and learn more, and if that’s whetted your appetite for more Central Asian university history, take a look at my previous posts on this topic.
The first Kazakhstani university was opened in Tashket. And its first Rector was a student.
(c) Andrei Mikhailov and Kazakhstan InformBureau; English translation by Emma Sabzalieva
Today, when higher education in Kazakhstan has become widely available (and, it seems, has lost all meaning), it’s a good time to remember how it all began.
Until October 1917 on the territory of modern Kazakhstan, there were only a few gymnasiums [higher schools] (including two in Verny). But there was not a single higher education institution. So until 1928, the highly educated class of Kazakhstanis were trained outside of Kazakhstan.
Our educated intelligentsia were mainly trained in three universities – Turkestan State University, Central Asian Communist University in Tashkent and the Communist Workers University of the East (KUTV) in Moscow. In 1924-25, 927 Kazakhs were trained at Turkestan University, and 100 Kazakh students in Moscow universities.
And our first higher education institute [HEI] – the Kazakh Institute of Education (Kazpedvuz) – was opened in 1926 … in Tashkent. To be fair, it was “especially for Kazakhstan.” It was transferred to Alma-Ata [now Almaty] in 1928 and became the first of our domestic universities – the Kazakh Pedagogical Institute.
Three more HEI followed specializing in veterinary and zootechnical sciences, agricultural sciences and medicine. So, when in 1932 another teacher training institute was established in Uralsk (based on the one transferred from Orenburg), the number of HEIS had grown by five times since 1916!
However, no one at that time could foresee the heyday of higher education that we are witnessing today. Now almost all school leavers are almost automatically enrolling in higher education. Nowadays, wherever you look, you will surely see an academic or someone who can offer some kind of scientific advice. For world science, such an abundance of high-level scientific minds in Kazakhstan is of little importance, but… nevertheless, it’s nice when two seemingly unremarkable Kazakhs meet by chance, and both turn out to be well-known scientists, Doctors of Science [Soviet qualification higher than a PhD], professors, “who made a huge contribution”, etc. etc.
When the first Kazakh Pedagogical Institute was organized in Tashkent, experienced teachers were especially invited from Moscow. (Surprisingly, none refused the invitation!) Among them was, for example, the famous explorer of Central Asia – Professor of Turkology S.E. Malov.
But the most curious thing is that the first rector of Kazpedvuz was… a student, Temirbek Zhurgenov. Zhurgenov studied at SAGU (Central Asian State University), the first HEI in the “Red East”, created five years earlier by the decree of Lenin.
Unlike today’s muddled nomenklatura of “doctors” and self-proclaimed academics, Zhurgenov – even as a student – was very well-known. Even before becoming the rector of Kazpedvuz in his final year of study, he became the plenipotentiary of the Kazakh ASSR in the Republic of Turkestan in his second year. And unlike the rapid career rise of today’s leaders, Zhurgenov’s career development came off the back of a series of good posts – and family money. (It is interesting that Zhurgenov was later also able to find time to Chair the People’s Commissar of Education in Uzbekistan).
The first university in Kazakhstan appeared only in 1934. It was the famous Kazakh State University (KazGU) named after Kirov in the city of Alma-Ata. In the first year, there were only 54 students in its two faculties (physics and biophysics). And for every two students in those years, there was one teacher! And what teachers there were! Amongst the 25 teachers, there were 5 professors and 10 associate professors including those from Moscow State and Kazan State [very prestigious] Universities!
It is interesting that the KazGU was located in the building of the former Verny gymnasium (where Frunze studied). And more interestingly, it was the only university in the capital of the republic all the time that Kazakhstan was part of the USSR. So when students were asked, “Where do you study?”, there was no need to clarify their answer: “At the University!”
A summer of learning: Fieldwork, conferences, and more in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan
It’s been rather quiet on the blog of late.
Don’t worry – I haven’t run out of ideas to keep the blog going. On the contrary, I probably now have too many. I also have a LOT of new photos of universities to add to my photo gallery (see the bottom right part of the homepage). Bet you can’t wait for that!
The reason for the lower than usual level of activity is that I’ve been doing fieldwork for my PhD thesis over the last two months.
This has involved meeting with over 30 wonderful academics in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and spending a time with each of them discussing their personal experiences of working in higher education since the late Soviet period.
I have learned so much from my respondents and am incredibly grateful to each of them, not just for their time, but also for their willingness to share their own stories with me. Once I am back in Canada next month, I will need to spend time reflecting on these interviews and making sure I do justice to the rich data I have been able to gather.
All the interviews have been anonymised so I can’t thank people publicly – but they know who they are. Thank you. Спасибо.
In addition to doing these interviews, I’ve also been selected to present at three conferences, one in each country.
At the joint ESCAS-CESS conference in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in June, I organized a panel on The shifting landscapes of post-Soviet higher education, presenting the paper Conceptualizing change in post-Soviet higher education. I also convened a roundtable on to discuss the future for higher education in the post-Soviet space. Read more about the conference here.
In July, I was invited to present at a conference on Tradition and change in a contemporary world in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. This is a very fitting theme for my thesis work on change (and stability), although at the request of the conference organizer, the paper I presented drew on my earlier comparative work on the UK and Canada and was entitled Connecting history with contemporary identity in higher education. The article that this paper is based on can be found here.
Finally, here in Astana, Kazakhstan, I am pleased to have presented today (19 August) at the first annual conference of the Graduate School of Public Policy at Nazarbayev University.
My paper was Public policy and higher education reform in Central Asia, which discusses how the world-class university has become a global public policy strategy for higher education.
Although this is an excellent example of policy convergence, I argue that Kazakhstan’s strategy in creating Nazarbayev University offers a creative shift to this world-class university model: one that embraces the dominant global university model whilst at the same time transforming it to be useful and applicable for other purposes. You can read my related article on this subject here.
The conference was themed around good governance and attracted a diverse array of international presenters. Each of the presentations I was able to see added something new to my understanding of governance and public policy, from thinking about the state as a supplier of institutions for economic diversification in Kazakhstan (by Zhanat Murzakulova) to learning more about the implications of informal institutions for post-Soviet education systems (by Dr Dina Sharipova), and a lot more in between.
And last but not least, in amongst all the interviews and conferences and photographing university buildings, it’s been absolutely wonderful to catch up with family and friends. Being dispersed so globally can have its downsides, so it makes the moments of being together even more special.
What a great summer.
Holiday viewing: Universities in Soviet Kazakhstan
Every now and again, I treat you (well, really this is as much for my own benefit) to a visual offering on this blog. In previous years, we’ve had early Soviet era Central Asia posters, a tour of Bishkek’s universities and a selection of Christmas trees for the Tajik school and university students who were banned from putting up Christmas trees for the festive season in 2015.
For the winter holidays this year, I offer you another sojourn into the recent history of Central Asia with a series of images of Kazakhstan’s universities from the Almaty City State Archives. This photo story is from Kazakh news agency BNews by journalist Aigul Mukhambetova. The story is in Russian and I’ve given an informal English translation below.
On the subject of university history and the importance of place (but not on Central Asia), you might also be interested in a recent article I’ve had published in the Canadian journal Comparative & International Education on the connections between universities’ foundations and their current levels of engagement with their local communities.
So – happy viewing and happy reading, but most of all happy holidays. May peace, reason and expertise reign in 2017 for everyone in the world.
Какими были крупнейшие вузы страны в годы их становления (ФОТО)
Which were the country’s best universities during its founding years?
В современном Казахстане огромную роль играют высшие учебные заведения, которые за годы независимости выпустили сотни тысяч высококвалифицированных специалистов. Однако их история началась еще в довоенный период. Редакция BNews.kz предлагает провести небольшой экскурс в первые годы становления нескольких алматинских вузов.
In contemporary Kazakhstan, higher education institutions play an important role, and since independence in 1991, hundreds of thousands of highly qualified specialists have graduated. Yet the institutions’ histories started even before the Second World War. The BNews.kz team invite you on a small excursion into the first years of some of Almaty’s universities.
КазНУ им. аль-Фараби // Al-Farabi Kazakh National University
Казахский национальный университет им. аль-Фараби был основан в 1934 году. Тогда университету было присвоено имя С.М. Кирова. В становлении университета оказали помощь вузы Москвы, Ленинграда, Казани, Украины.
Al-Farabi Kazakh National University was founded in 1934. At that time, it was named after Sergei Kirov [Russian Communist leader assassinated also in 1934, possibly at Stalin’s (indirect) order]. Universities in Moscow, Leningrad [St Petersburg], Kazan and Ukraine provided support to the foundation of the Kazakh National University.
Во время становления университета в КазГУ работали известные ученые и общественные деятели. В первый год существования вуза работали два факультета, когда сейчас студентов обучают по 80 с лишним специальностям на 14 факультетах.
At the time it was founded, well-known scholars and public figures worked at Kazakh State University. In its first year, there were two faculties. Today, students can study for one of around 80 degrees in 14 faculties.
Сегодня КазНУ успешно сотрудничает более чем с 400 крупнейшими университетами из 25 стран мира. В 2015 году вуз вошел в топ-300, заняв 275 место среди 800 лучших мировых университетов.
Today, Kazakh National University successfully cooperates with more than 400 excellent universities in 25 countries. In 2015 it joined the top 300 universities, taking 275th place amongst the world’s best 800 universities.
КазНАИ им. Т.К. Жургенова // T. K. Zhurgenov Kazakh National Academy of Arts
История КазНАИ им. Т.К. Жургенова начинается с 1955 года. В институте искусств им. Курмангазы (ныне Консерватории) был открыт театральный факультет.
The history of the T. K. Zhurgenov Kazakh National Academy of Arts started in 1955 when a theatre faculty was opened at the Kurmangazy Institute (now Conservatory) of Arts.
В 1977 году на его базе был создан алматинский государственный театрально-художественный институт. Сегодня в академии функционируют 6 факультетов: театральное искусство, кино и ТВ, хореография, живопись, скульптура и дизайн, искусствоведение и музыкальное искусство.
Сегодня в вузе подготовку специалистов осуществляют 23 кафедры, из которых 17 являются выпускающими и 6 общеакадемическими.
In 1977, the Almaty State Theatre Institute was founded on the Academy’s site. Today, there are six faculties: theatre, cinema and TV, choreography, drawing, sculpture and design, art history, and music. Today the Academy prepares students in 23 departments.
КазНПУ им. Абая // Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University
Казахский национальный педагогический университет имени Абая основан в 1928 году.
Сегодня это крупнейший и ведущий университет Казахстана, один из центров отечественной педагогической науки и культуры. Университет сейчас занимает достойное место среди 10 лучших университетов республики и первое – в рейтинге педагогических.
Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University was founded in 1928.
Today it is one of Kazakhstan’s leading universities and a centre for national pedagogical science and culture. The university is ranked amongst the top 10 in the country and the first for pedagogical studies.
КазНПУ им. Абая включает 11 факультетов, институт магистратуры и докторантуры PhD, 10 научно-исследовательских институтов и центров, лаборатории и более 64 кафедры. В университете обучается свыше 11 тысяч будущих специалистов по 55 специальностям бакалавриата, 46 специальностям магистратуры и 16 специальностям докторантуры PhD.
Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University has 11 faculties, an institute for Master’s and PhD students, 10 research institutes and centres, laboratories and more than 64 departments. More than 11,000 future specialists study at the university for over 55 undergraduate degrees, 46 Master’s degrees and 16 PhD degree subjects.
КазНМУ им. С. Д. Асфендиярова // S. D. Asfendiyarov Kazakh National Medical University
Решение об открытии медицинского института в Алма-Ате было принято в 1930 году. Штат института в 1931 году включал 5 профессоров, 4 доцента, 13 ассистентов и 2 преподавателя.
The decision to open a medical institute in Alma-Ata (Almaty’s previous name) was taken in 1930. the institute opened in 1931 with five professors, four assistant professors, 13 assistants and two teachers.
За годы войны институт окончили около 2000 врачей, 75% выпускников были направлены на фронт. Бессмертный подвиг во имя свободы Родины совершили на фронте воспитанники медицинского института – Маншук Маметова и Владимир Иванилов, которым посмертно были присвоены звания Героя Советского Союза. Они навечно зачислены студентами медицинского университета.
Сегодня в КазНМУ им. С.Д. Асфендиярова работают известные ученые-педагоги Казахстана, академики Национальной академии наук РК, Российской академии медицинских наук, Академии профилактической медицины РК, Международных академий, заслуженные деятели науки и образования, заслуженные врачи и фармацевты.
During World War Two, around 2,000 doctors graduated, of whom 75% were sent to the front. Two Medical Institute graduates, Manshuk Mametov and Vladimir Ivanilov, were recognized posthumously with Hero of the Soviet Union status for their heroic efforts in the name of freedom for the Motherland. They have been marked for eternity a students of the medical university.
These days, well-known Kazakh science teachers, members of the Kazakhstan National Academy of Science, the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, the Kazkhstan Academy of Preventative Medicine, International academies, recipients of national science/education awards and honoured doctors and pharmacists all work at the S. D. Asfendiyarov Kazakh National Medical University,
КазНТУ им. К.И. Сатпаева // K. I. Satpaev Kazakh National Technical University
История казахского национального технического университета им. К.И.Сатпаева — флагмана инженерного образования республики берет начало в 1934 году. Тогда вуз назывался Казахский горно-металлургический институт.
K. I. Satpaev Kazakh National Technical University is a leading provider of engineering education and was founded in 1934. At that time it was called the Kazakh Mining and Metallurgy Institute.
В 1999 г. за особые заслуги в подготовке инженерно-технических кадров страны постановлением Правительства Республики Казахстан КазНТУ присвоено имя выдающегося ученого, академика Каныша Имантаевича Сатпаева. КазНТУ сегодня – это 11 профильных институтов и 54 кафедры, где преподают и ведут научные исследования около 200 докторов и более 500 кандидатов наук.
In 1999 the university was given the name of academic Kanish Imanatevich Satpaev by government decree in recognition of its important role in the training of engineering and technical graduates. Today the university has 11 institutes and 54 departments, where teaching and research is undertaken by around 200 PhDs and more than 500 Candidates of Science.
