Comparative and International Higher Education Policy Specialist; Focus on Central Asia
International students are ready to fly back to Russia - if they can afford the price of the ticket After partially reopening its borders to international students in March 2021, the Russian government announced in September that all international students can return - or come for the first time - to study in the country. …
Continue reading International students can return to Russia
Feline good about getting back to the library During March 2021, the Russian Ministry of Education and Science passed two orders permitting the return of international students from a total of 31 countries. This includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (Turkmenistan is not on either list), other ex-Soviet states and a slightly random collection of …
Continue reading Russia partially re-opens its borders for international students
With borders still closed and Covid cases on the rise, many of the 26,000 or so Tajik students who study in Russia each year remain stuck at home. With around five million students (a massive number but actually only 2% of the world's student population) studying abroad, Tajikistan's international students are far from being alone. …
Continue reading Distance learning feels very distant in Tajikistan
New regulations in Russia are making it easier for international students to work whilst studying
Around 4,000 Indian international students are still stuck in Kyrgyzstan after COVID-19 measures have led to closed borders and calls to return home. This represents almost half of the total number of Indian students in the country - India is the top sending country of international students to Kyrgyzstan (see my 2019 post on this). …
Continue reading Celebrity calling: Supporting Indian students stuck in Kyrgyzstan
A recent radio interview with Umed Mansurov, Vice-Rector (President) for International Affairs of Russian-Tajik Slavonic University in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, shed interesting light on what the future may hold for the country's higher education sector.
After a minor uproar over Uzbekistan's February 2020 announcement that its students abroad should return home, the country's latest announcement about where its citizens may (and may not) study abroad was unlikely to go unnoticed - even as regional travel remains restricted as a result of Covid-19. A total of 16 universities - 8 each …
Say hi to Pep, who likes to hang out at the University of Regensburg in Germany. Pep has nothing to do with today's story but I seem to have exhausted most of the internet's attempts at cat memes relevant to university students. Whereas their Uzbek counterparts are being sent home from studying abroad, Kyrgyz students …
No choice but to home for Uzbekistan's overseas students Uzbekistan's Ministry of Education has announced that Uzbek students studying abroad in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan should return home and enrol at a domestic higher education institution. The Ministry has been quick to underline that this decision is not connected to the novel coronavirus that …
Continue reading Why are Uzbek students abroad being sent home?
This is the excellent question posed by Khaidar Shodiev writing for Asia-Plus, the nearest thing Tajikistan has to an independent newspaper. Strictly speaking, the country's higher education system is not entirely devoid of international universities, with the regional University of Central Asia's campus in Khorog and three Russian branch campuses all in the capital Dushanbe. …
Continue reading Why are there no foreign universities in Tajikistan?
Emma Sabzalieva 