Education spending boost
Kazakhstan is to increase spending on science development by 25 times until 2012, reaching 350 billion tenge. Nursultan Nazarbayev announced this spending boost while reading a lecture at the Gumilyov Eurasian National University.
Universities will play a new role of scientific complexes, engaged not only in training, but also in fundamental and applied research in technical, liberal arts and sciences.
Kazakhstan’s tertiary education expenditure per student expressed in percentage points of GDP per capita is one of the world’s lowest (10.2% compared to an average of 24.1% for FSU low/middle-income countries). Despite the establishment of some landmark private institutions in Astana and Almaty, the overall picture is rather disquieting. One can hope that the new funds also become available outside these urban centers.
The increase in spending for higher education goes alongside a demise of practical skills teaching. Vocational schools have seen a drop in enrolment figures, despite the high demand for skilled labour in the booming economy. This is partly due to the fact that vocational schools derive 70% of their funding from local budgets. While certain considerably better-off oblasts could maintain funding levels for vocational schools, others (incidentally those with the highest unemployment rates) had to cut down drastically on education spending.
on May 26th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
In 1997, Governments of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, together with Aga-Khan Foundation, signed an international treaty establishing the University of Central Asia (http://www.akdn.org/uca/uca.htm). Its campuses should be situated in 3 countries and studies will mostly deal with economic development. Government officials are supposed to be among the students.
This is another pricy education initiative, which does not have clear outcomes. It is not known whether the Kyrgyz Government will stay in, and where will the Faculty will recruited from. However, it looks good on paper.
on May 26th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
Was living in Taldykorgan the closest city to Tekeli where the Kazakhstan campus of the Central Asian University is to be located. Really doesn’t seem like it’s moving very fast and I went to Tekeli, will be hard to say the least to recruit and keep good people.
Appears to be the same old make an announcement and then try to put it together. Comes back again to the whole notion of planning.