Higher education system of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the light of national and global university rankings

The paper focuses on the major trends of higher education system development in the Republic of Kazakhstan. It gives an overview of the evaluation of Kazakh universities by national and global university rankings. Most of the experts are of the opinion that reforming the national higher education system requires paying special attention to the experience of the leading Western and some Asian universities which are at the top positions in world rankings. However, the trends of higher education development in the countries that, like Russia, inherited the Soviet education system and try to build their national models are of interest as well. One of these countries is the Republic of Kazakhstan, one of the few former Soviet republics to have managed a successful adaptation to market economy. Nowadays Kazakhstan is a signatory of major international documents in the area of education (the Lisbon Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education in the European Region, the Bologna Declaration etc.) On the whole, Kazakhstan's higher education system undergoes transformations. In line with the challenges of our time, the major vector of Kazakh universities' development is internationalization. At present, world rankings are used as the main instrument of measuring the effectiveness of universities. Even though this instrument is questionable as to how adequately the existing rankings evaluate the universities, it is widely used in the modern world. Thus, we have to follow it as well. The purpose of entering the world rankings by Kazakh universities was set by President N.A. Nazarbayev in his message to the people of Kazakhstan in 2010. The most popular nowadays are two global rankings: QS and THE. Global and national rankings are widely used in Kazakhstan for the universities' positioning and promotion, with the government paying much attention to it. Trying to enter the top of world rankings, Kazakh universities are actively studying international experience, working out and implementing their development strategies. However, as the trends of the recent years show, this task is feasible only for two metropolitan universities, the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University and the L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University. The Kazakh model of higher education is increasingly commercialized. It is evident both in the dynamics of the number of state-funded student positions and in the tuition fees. Internationalization is marked with a bias in favor of Western partners, a tendency underlined by the fact that some universities teach in English and employ mostly foreigners. At the same time it is evident that the Republic of Kazakhstan has its own way of moving to a modernized higher education system.

Keywords

Authors

References