Emma Harden-Wolfson

Higher education in Central Asia blog

  • Getting around the law to get in to university in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

    Central Asian faculty and friends I know are fond of observing that higher education in the region is not as good as it used to be, and/or is facing a ‘crisis’ because of a lack of quality, corruption, outflow of good teachers and so on. All of these points are valid. Yet at the same… Read more

  • Keeping the classroom secular in Kyrgyzstan

    Kyrgyzstan’s President Sooronbay Jeenbekov has called on citizens to ensure that education in the country remains secular, citing the constitutional principle of compulsory basic education. At present, Kyrgyzstan has over 110 religious institutions – mostly medressas and Islamic colleges plus one Islamic university, but there are also 13 recorded Christian schools. This is a tiny… Read more

  • New article: Negotiating international research collaborations in Tajikistan

    Hot off the online press! International research collaborations – whether these are informal groupings of researchers working together on a scientific problem of common interest or more formal arrangements (often with a budget and fixed timelines) – have increased so rapidly in number that one expert has called this growth “one of the most dramatic… Read more

  • More changes at the top of Uzbekistan’s universities

    Following the firing of the Rector of Tashkent’s ‘most corrupt university’ in August 2019, another university leader has been shown the door. Rector Bahodyr Khodiev of Tashkent State University of Economics (TSUE) was suspended in November 2019 on the grounds of corruption. Details of Khodiev’s alleged activities have not been made public, but this very… Read more

  • To merge, or not to merge… But is that the question in Kazakhstan?

    On the back of recent news that a number of universities in Kazakhstan are to be reorganized and some merged, rumours are now spreading that at least one of the proposed mergers will not in fact go ahead. According to Dilara Aronova, a journalist for northern Kazakhstan’s regional news outlet Kostanay News, social media has… Read more

  • Stocks and shares but not for sale – More reorganization in Kazakhstan’s universities

    The Kazakh government has typically paid a very active role in the organization and governance of higher education in the country. Over time the particular policy instruments du jour have changed depending on the main aim being pursued by the state. Of late, there has been an uptick in the number of university mergers as well as the… Read more