Comparative and International Higher Education Policy Specialist; Focus on Central Asia
Happy new year / S novim godom / Soli nav muborak to you all! Kickstarting this year's set of posts is a report from Kyrgyzstan on steps being taken - primarily by the government and a small but growing number of local NGOs - to bring greater equality to the country. The article can be …
Continue reading Steps towards gender equality in Kyrgyzstan
The World Bank has recently published The skills road: skills for employability in Tajikistan (full citation at the end of this post). The report argues that Generating more productive employment is arguably the most critical challenge [for the government, against a backdrop of relative political and economic stability]. This finding comes from an extensive household survey undertaken in Tajikistan …
Malaysian Limkokwing University has committed to opening a campus in Tajikistan, a not unexpected move by this ambitious and globally facing technical/creative university, which I first investigated in 2011. The announcement was made during President Rahmon's visit to Malaysia earlier this week. In the press release on the President's website [ru], it is noted that there are 'only' around 40 …
I didn't realise when I blogged last month about the skills deficit in Tajikistan that this would become the first in a rather sad series of stories about educational deficit. The first post was followed by a story from the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, and today it's the turn of American funded website …
It seems that everyone wants to get in on the game of identifying deficits in Tajikistan. This time it's the turn of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, in an audio report published [ru] [tj] at http://iwpr.net/report-news/tajikistans-education-deficit. I couldn't access either audio stream but the text below [en] (is it a transcript?) is reproduced below. …
Avaz Saifiddinov, a journalist with as-independent-as-is-possible-in-Tajikistan Asia-Plus media group, this week reports [ru] – in almost apocalyptic terms – on the devastating impact that a lack of education and skills training can bring to a nation. He calls this qualification deficit the single biggest problem facing Tajikistan today, more so than corruption, lack of electricity …
A recent post from Kyrgyz blogger Begimai Sataeva, Kyrgyzstan’s Migration Tragedy [en] on New Eurasia, points to the loss of highly trained and skilled workers as a 'real tragedy' for the country. It is certainly the case that many people who migrate for educational purposes do not return to their home country, although my 2011 study …
Emma Sabzalieva 