Emma Harden-Wolfson

Higher education in Central Asia blog

  • Study abroad – what happens next?

    Kazakh newspaper The Astana Times has this week published a story featuring three Bolashak scholarship holders to understand what happens once they return to Kazakhstan. The Bolashak Scholarships are the Kazakh government’s flagship scholarship programme, and have sent over 10,000 students abroad to study at top universities around the world. Although a condition of the scholarship is that… Read more

  • More on higher education quality in Kyrgyzstan

    Central Asian news agency CA-News reports on a forthcoming roundtable discussion in Kyrgyzstan on methodological issues in academic research [report below in Russian]. The roundtable will focus on issues relating to the quality of dissertation research in Kyrgyzstan and aims to present recommendations to improve both the quality and effectiveness of what the press release calls ‘scientific… Read more

  • Youth in Kazakhstan: changes, challenges & opportunities

    The second brief that I’d like to recommend from the Central Asia Program at George Washington University (click here for the first on migration from the Pamir region of Tajikistan to Russia) summarises the findings of a fascinating conference on youth in Kazakhstan in April 2014. The full briefing note is available via the Central Asia… Read more

  • Migration to Russia from the Pamirs/GBAO, Tajikistan

    Thanks to the Central Asia Program at George Washington University in the US for promoting many of its recent briefing notes via Twitter – it has made for some excellent reading! Two articles in particular caught my eye – one called From Pamirs to the Outside World: Seeking Decent Jobs by Kavikas Kuhistoni which was published in August 2014 (see… Read more

  • Quantity not quality in Kyrgyz universities

    The ever reliable EurasiaNet had a nice piece recently on the growth of ‘inferior’ universities in Kyrgyzstan. There’s not been any recent news on higher education in the country so the report is able to take a longer term and slightly more analytical perspective. Some of the facts that are used appear to be lifted… Read more

  • Challenges in contemporary higher education in Kyrgyzstan – published

    Further to my post last month, I’m delighted to announce that my article, Challenges in contemporary higher education in Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia has been published online in the peer-reviewed journal Perspectives: policy and practice in higher education. A link to read the article can be found below and on my Academia.edu profile. Challenges in contemporary higher education in Kyrgyzstan, Central… Read more