Regional

Central Asian Universities to Benefit from EU Broadband

Researchers in Central Asia are to benefit from a new high-speed data-communications network. The European Union-funded Central Asian Research and Education Network (Caren) project will provide broadband for the first time to about one million students and faculty in more than 200 universities and research institutions. Countries dotted along the old Silk Road will benefit, including Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The network is due to come online early next year.

– Computing News
July 14, 2009

Azerbaijan

Following School Shooting, State to Guarantee Security

Azerbaijani Education Minister Misir Mardanov has said that the state will ensure security at most schools and universities in Baku during the next academic year, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service reports.

The decision is in response to an attack at Azerbaijan’s State Oil Academy on April 30 that left 13 people dead. Mardanov said that due to limited financial resources, a maximum of 4,500 educational institutions can be protected, although the Interior Ministry has promised further assistance.

– RFE/RL
June 2, 2009

Kazakhstan

Global Financial Crisis Wreaks Havoc on a Tertiary Sector with Global Aspirations

Kazakhstan’s system of higher education is suffering amid the global financial crisis, jeopardizing the government’s plans to turn the country into a regional economic powerhouse. In recent months, thousands of students have been facing expulsion from universities as they find themselves unable to pay tuition and fees. In the face of mounting criticism, the government has moved to fast-track measures to assist financially strapped students.

The wider implications of the current financial issues could hamper President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s vision of transforming Kazakhstan into a knowledge economy, turning the country trilingual and making it one of the world’s 50 most competitive countries.

Financial difficulties are hitting state and private universities alike, with both facing falling enrollment and decreasing revenues from students. One institution – the private, Almaty-based Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research (KIMEP) – is facing a budget shortfall of $6 million. For the 2009-2010 academic year, revenue may decrease by up to 20 percent, the institute’s president, Dr. Chan Young Bang, cautioned in April. The university calculates that up to 900 students may not be able to pay tuition for the 2009-2010 academic year. KIMEP is implementing austere measures to balance its books, cutting 23 mainly expatriate faculty positions and announcing a 16 percent rise in tuition fees, currently $6,000-$7,000 per year, which is already very expensive in relation to average wages in the Central Asian economy. The announcement provoked an outcry among students, who staged a protest in the university courtyard in late March.

Kazakhstan’s universities are not only facing budget shortfalls, but also falling student numbers because the birth rate plunged in the early 1990s in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union.

Universities across the country are facing difficulties. In January, there was public protest after a member of parliament, Saginbek Tursunov, claimed that 200,000 students had been forced to withdraw for non-payment of tuition and fees. That claim prompted Prime Minister Karim Masimov to intervene, despite the original figure being grossly overstated. Education and Science Minister Zhanseit Tuymebayev clarified shortly afterward that of 7,000 expulsions during the academic year so far, 3,000 were performance-related. However, that still left 4,000 students whose education was interrupted due to financial problems. Masimov decided to take action on a matter that he said was “growing into a purely political one.”

Even as the higher-education sector as a whole struggles in the face of the financial crisis, plans to open a new English-language university in Astana at a cost of $165 million are proceeding. The university, with a focus on science, will open in partnership with University College London (UCL) in the fall, initially with a foundation course taught by UCL and later with degree courses taught by the University of Astana.

– Eurasianet
June 8, 2009

Russia

Students and Teachers Protest New Standardized Entrance Exam

Teachers and high school students gathered in Moscow in June to protest a recent initiative by Russian education officials to standardize entrance examinations to Russian universities. The Unified State Exam, or yediny gosudarstvenny ekzamen (EGE), was introduced in Russia for the first time this year.

Critics say the EGE is a poor measure of academic aptitude, and is already having a detrimental effect on learning in schools, causing students and teachers to focus exclusively on passing the test. The exam, which is administered to students before they can graduate from high school, also aids their placement in higher education institutes.

Defenders of standardized tests say they help gauge intellectual aptitude in an unbiased, consistent manner, and can help universities fairly compare students from across the country, or across the world. But critics of the SAT and other standardized tests say they discount imagination, creativity, and other qualities of well-rounded students.

The same arguments are being made in Moscow. The Unified State Exam is mainly composed of multiple-choice questions, and replaces the old Soviet screening system for high-school graduates, which comprised a mix of school grades, written university entry exams, and oral exams prized as a particularly effective way of identifying talented students.

The Russian Education Ministry says it is introducing the EGE as part of its obligations as a member of the Council of Europe under the Bologna convention on higher education, and also as a means of fighting the rampant corruption and grade-buying that is seen as endemic in Russian high schools and higher education. The EGEs are graded electronically, by computer, and as a ministry official quipped while visiting a school during testing, no one is bringing teachers flowers on exam day any more.

– RFE/RL
June 24, 2009

Tajikistan

Students Donning Hijab Expelled from University then Reinstated

Eight students were dismissed from Tajik State University in May because they violated the hijab-ban at educational establishments. They were reinstated a month later to the Dushanbe-based university, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reports. The women all say they will continue to wear their head scarves, or hijab.

The controversy over wearing a hijab at Tajik universities began two years ago when the education minister went to universities himself and sent home any women he found wearing hijabs. In 2007, a student, Davlatmoh Ismoilova, did not accept the order against the hijabs and filed a court case against the ban. She lost her case and did not return to school.

Education Ministry official Jaloliddin Amirov told RFE/RL that the hijab ban is in force and whomever violates it runs the risk of being dismissed from university.

– RFE/RL
May 26, 2009
– RFE/RL
June 16, 2009

Turkmenistan

Nanny State Requires Students Issue Written Promises to Behave This Summer

Students at Turkmen universities were made to write a written promise that they would be “good kids” over the summer vacation, reports RFE/RL. In a special letter, they had to state that they would not drive a car, visit gambling houses, go abroad, or contact foreign organizations operating in Turkmenistan.

A university lecturer in Ashgabat confirmed that students had to sign such letters before starting their summer vacation. Officials at Turkmenistan’s Education Ministry had no comment on the issue.

– Turkmen Service
June 24, 2009