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1 APRIL 2022
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ВОСПИТАНИЕ НОВОГО ПОКОЛЕНИЯ В ЭПОХУ ГЛОБАЛЬНОГО ПРЕОБРАЗОВАНИЯ
RAISING A NEW GENERATION IN ERA OF GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION •
1 APRIL 2022
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for education and language learning (ACTR/ACCELS), the International Council for research and exchange
of scientists (IREX), the Soros foundation, and other education programs of EU countries, human resource
development programs of Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, India, etc. functioned in Uzbekistan to foster
student exchange programs. Furthermore, thousands of public officials, including higher education sector
administration, travelled abroad in order to get acquainted with the experience of other countries
1
.
Simultaneously, Uzbek government also established national foundation, which was called “Umid”
foundation in order to stimulate young Uzbek students to gain international education in leading universities
of the world. According to the statistics, just for 6 years (1997-2003), 828 students had been dispatched
to USA, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan for undergraduate and graduate degree
programs. Later, this foundation was merged with “Ustoz” Foundation and reestablished as an “Istedod”
foundation, though which 914 students and teachers conducted internships and retraining courses in more
than 20 countries during 2003-2018 [5].
Unfortunately, student exchange programs cannot always guarantee “brain-gain” for their home
countries, and in some cases they may lead to “brain-drain” issue. Experience of foreign countries could
prove this statement. And exactly that happened with Uzbekistan as well, when hundreds of students stayed
abroad after completing their studies. However, with the same purpose, i.e. to dispatch young talented
students and researchers to foreign countries for degree and internship programs, new “El-yurt umidi”
foundation was instituted on the basis of “Istedod” foundation in 2018. Surely, new foundation offered
different financing mechanisms with altered conditions.
Another key reform feature in the higher education sector of Uzbekistan was the encouragement
by government to open the branches of foreign universities in the country. From 1991 until 2016, seven
branches of foreign universities were established in Uzbekistan. However, the process of opening branches
of foreign universities at that time was almost impossible without apolitical decision.
It is also critically important to mention that hosting or joining international conferences, seminars,
symposiums of Uzbek researchers was also acknowledged by related ministries, or university administration,
as a part of the process of internationalization or modernization of the higher education sector in 1990s.
Unfortunately, many of those events were unsustainable and lacking clear vision and goals.
Political shift in Uzbekistan in 2016 triggered the second phase of higher education sector’s
transformation , which can be called a “dynamic reform era”. Government began to closely deal with the
education sector in order to reach its political, socio-economic, scientific, technological, innovational and
other strategic goals.
Consecutive presidential decrees, resolutions of the Cabinet of the Ministers, laws, regulations, concepts,
strategies, roadmaps, and other regulatory documents, on the one hand, accelerated the transformation
process, but, on the other hand, caused some confusion among higher education institutions and
stakeholders. Since 2016, about 20 regulatory documents were adopted in the higher education sector.
Moreover, responsible organizations were limited both in resources, knowledge, experience, and human
capital in order to follow those orders. New players and decision makers came out in higher education
system with variety of tasks, goals and criteria.
During recent 5 years, 22 branches of foreign universities and 21 non-state higher education institutions
were established, and the total number of higher education institutions reached 156 [6]. Additionally,
one important reform of the higher education system
2
was the establishment of an independent Quality
Assurance Agency – State Inspection for the supervision of the Quality of Education. This new organization
was instituted under the Cabinet of Ministries and functions independently from the Ministry of Higher and
Secondary Specialized Ministry of Uzbekistan. So, first time in the history of Uzbekistan, quality assurance of
education was reached the state policy level.
Government launched new approach to internationalize the higher education system, for instance,
by introducing credit-module system, fostering joint and double degree programs, raising the ranking of
Uzbek universities at the international level, etc. [1]. National University of Uzbekistan and Samarkand
State University were defined as “flagship universities” and special presidential decrees were adopted to
accelerate the process. According to those decrees, both universities have to transform their education and
research capacity to meet international standards and become a part of the Top-1000world universities list
[7, 10].
At the end of 2021, two presidential decrees were adopted in order to grant financial, academic and
organizational-management autonomy to 35 leading higher education institutions of Uzbekistan [8, 11].
These huge top-level decisions clearly demonstrate the political attention the government pays to the
rapid transformation of the higher education sector. However, one can argue that implementation of the
government policy on university reform with a “top-down approach” is obviously difficult.
1
Such programs mainly organized in the framework on ODA through the projects of organizations such as JICA, KOIKA, TICA, TASIS,
ADB, DAAD, WB, IMF, etc)
2
In fact, State Inspection for the supervision of quality of education of Uzbekistan assures Quality Assurance not only higher
education sector, but also pre-school and public education
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