Belarus

BSU Loses Autonomy

In June, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenko assumed the power to hire and fire the rector of Belarusian State University in Minsk. The appointment of the heads of other universities in Belarus has been a presidential prerogative for some time, but the state university – the country’s “flagship” – had retained a certain degree of autonomy. However, over the last two years, its status had been gradually eroded.

In the presidential elections of 2001, the university failed to give Lukashenko the support he had expected. As a result, the president denied the rector his ministerial rank – until 2001, the university ranked as a government ministry, and the rector held the status of a minister – just as the university was about to celebrate its 80th anniversary. Lukashenko and all senior government officials boycotted the celebrations. A probe into university affairs ensued, with the conclusion that the university was not devoting enough time serving as an arm of the government. In March, the president warned academics who did not agree with the views of the head of state that they had no place at state universities.

The Belarusian Constitution guarantees freedom of “creative, scholarly and technical activity and teaching,” but Human Rights Watch has previously criticized Lukashenka for centralizing control for campuses and banning political activity.

— The Times Higher Education Supplement
June 6, 2003

Kazakhstan

Australian University Helping to Rebuild Education System

Australia’s Monash University is helping to rebuild the education system in Kazakhstan in collaboration with Soros-Kazakhstan and the Kazakhstan Department of Education.

Monash’s Faculty of Education was asked in late 2001 to help develop Kazakhstan’s national K-12 curriculum framework. The system will be outcome-based – it establishes desired outcomes and then designs the curriculum to achieve those outcomes. Monash will also help Kazakh universities extend their teaching programs and establish master’s programs in their education faculties.

— Monash Newsline
April 8, 2003

Kyrgyzstan

Students Hope Honor Code Stems Corruption

Students from several Kyrgyz institutions of higher education have drafted an academic honor code that they hope will rid the country’s academic community of corruption and other undesirable phenomena. The code, which is the brainchild of a student organization called Progress, prohibits paying bribes to teachers, copying from other students during exams or using crib sheets. It also bans submitting papers copied from the Internet, failing to attend classes, drinking, smoking, taking drugs and sleeping with teachers to pass exams. A commission of students and a lawyer will be set up to resolve conflicts and deal with violations of the code, according to one of the authors of the draft. Every higher-educational institution that subscribes to the code will receive US$6,000 for implementing it. The U.S. Embassy in Bishkek, the capital, is providing funds for the project.

— Deutsche Welle
July 30, 2003

Russia

90,000 Foreign Students and Growing?

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Eleonora Mitrofanova said in November at a meeting with delegates from Russian universities that yearly earnings from the international education market total US$150 million, and added that higher education institutions can increase their share in the global market to US$2 billion. She said there are 90,000 foreign students enrolled in Russian universities — almost half (40,000) coming from the Commonwealth of Independent States — and that she can see great potential for increasing that number.

The deputy minister also noted her approval of Russia signing the Bologna Declaration, stating that it will “promote Russian integration into the European system of education.”

— PRAVDA
Nov. 12, 2003

Minister Outlines Thoughts on Developing Export Market

The export of Russian educational services will increase at least 1,000 percent in the next few years, according to Russian Education Minister Vladimir Filippov at a news conference on modernizing Russian education. In the opinion of the minister, Russia earns far too little from the export of educational services.

Russian higher education is competitive in terms of the international educational market, Filippov said. “We offer a very attractive package of quality and price,” he noted. “To make this [increase] a reality, we have to create a mechanism to guarantee the quality of education so that a Russian diploma from an institution of higher learning is accepted throughout the world.”

Filippov believes the answer lies in “the creation of a network of daughter institutions of Russian universities and institutes abroad,” not necessarily by “stepping up efforts to attract foreign students to come to our institutions of higher learning.” The minister added that it will also be necessary to translate Russian curriculums into foreign languages. Filippov is convinced that Russian education will be sought in the developing nations of Africa and Asia, as well as in China.

— PRAVDA
Oct. 22, 2003

Academics Voice Opposition to Bologna

Two centuries of Russian academic excellence could be squandered in the rush to standardize higher education across Europe, some academics say. In voicing their opposition to the Bologna Process, critics fear it will endanger the standards of their country’s elite universities. In a keynote speech in October at the Salzburg Seminar on the challenges Russia faces in becoming part of the European Higher Education Area, the rector of Moscow State University, Viktor Sadovnichy, said: “University autonomy in Russia has been a hard-won thing. We cannot lose our originality.”

The cornerstones of the Russian system are an inflexible five-year diploma and higher degrees, with a candidate of science roughly equal to a doctorate and a doctor of science attainable only by the elite. Many academics feel these qualifications could be undermined by the Bologna Process, which Russia signed in September. Dr. Sadovnichy said the standardization of courses, quality assessment and grading was welcome if it furthered the academic equivalence, but not if it meant the demise of the Russian higher degree. “A three-year course leading to a bachelor degree is something I fail to understand,” he said. “I support education that lasts six to eight years. We need real experts.”

There were comments supporting Bologna initiatives from other speakers, who suggested that businesses and local employers were firm believers in an education system that was focused on graduating students qualified for the workplace and responsive to the demands of the labor market.

— The Times Higher Education Supplement
Oct. 17, 2003

Turkmenistan

Ministry Clamps Down on Falsified Documents

In accordance with a presidential decree issued in early July, applicants for admission to institutions of higher education are having their documents checked by the Ministry of National Security (MNB) to ensure that they have worked at least two years in their chosen field before seeking admission to higher education. In addition, candidates for admission are required to present a recommendation from their place of work as well as a Soviet-style work record proving that they actually worked somewhere.

In the process of checking documents, the MNB has turned up a number of cases throughout the country in which school administrators falsified work records. Most cases benefited children or other relatives of the officials who falsified the documents, and beneficiaries of the falsifications are reportedly being blacklisted.

— Eurasianet
July 30, 2003

Uzbekistan

Access to Education to Be Expanded

The Cabinet of Ministers in October ordered the expansion of the Uzbek educational system to provide opportunities for all secondary-school graduates to continue their education in specialized secondary schools or to at least complete 10th grade in general secondary schools. The target date for the change is 2009. Additional specialized secondary institutions and professional schools will have to be opened to accommodate the demand. Graduates of all types of secondary schools will then have the right to apply to institutions of higher education

— RFE/RL
Nov. 5, 2003