Comparative and International Higher Education Policy Specialist; Focus on Central Asia
Intrigued by reforms to education in Kazakhstan, from the new trilingual education policy to greater steps towards decentralization of governance? Want to know what students at a new Kazakh university think about life on campus or the effectiveness of their institution's strategic plan? Curious to learn more about students' views on learning methods, from videoessays to critical thinking …
Continue reading New research from Central Asian university students
There have been a spate of stories recently about Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev that suggest a new stage in his quarter century long leadership of the nation. This stage consists of the development of a legacy that seeks to frame Nazarbayev as if being written for future history textbooks. He has already taken on the mantle of Leader of …
During the past week I've been attending and presenting at the World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN) in magnificent New York, and wanted to use this blog post to follow up and share some reflections from an excellent conference. ASN is a large conference with two overarching sets of themes. Firstly, topic-based, …
Before the dust had even settled on the Minister for Education’s recent announcement that Kazakhstani universities will issue their own degree certificates from 2021, the next reform agenda for higher education in the country has been laid out. Speaking at a 2 April meeting with university rectors and faculty members, Deputy Prime Minister Dariga Nazarbayeva raised …
Continue reading University autonomy and academic freedom beckon in Kazakhstan
When you think of university outreach/access projects in Central Asia, you tend to think of initiatives by universities in richer countries in Europe or East/South East Asia to recruit students to study in those richer countries. More successful and popular efforts tend to be underwritten by the offer to fund the study through a scholarship. …
I try not to blindly copy and paste articles about Central Asian higher education so I'm passing on today's link with a little bit of hesitation. The reason for this is that the article takes an uncritical approach to the subject. Whilst the article is factual and informative, it's not controversial (in its true meaning …
I made my interest in Nazarbayev University clear in an earlier post, asking (only semi-jokingly) if it could become the Oxford of Kazakhstan. Largely at the eponymous President's initiative, Nazarbayev University is being pumped with millions of petro-dollars to become, at great speed, a world-leading centre of academic excellence. Following on from this, a recent article …
Just a few days after my post about universities' brands, I enjoyed reading an article in the Times Higher Education, the UK's specialist higher education publication, about Nazarbayev University. The article "No shame in the name" explains how a Cambridge University college has (at least temporarily) withdrawn a fellowship named after Nazarbayev. As in Nazarbayev …
Sorry for the silence since the last post (I try to post once a week) - I have been using all my spare time to complete a full draft of my Tajik study abroad paper. Given the wealth of information I received, you can imagine that it has taken some time to analyse all the …
Continue reading Nazarbayev University: the Oxford of Kazakhstan?
Emma Sabzalieva 