"We have kept our traditions": Durability in former Soviet higher education systems

• In Event: Varied voices: reflections and responses to higher education reforms in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan

Proposal

‘The last decade of the 20th century for the peoples of the former USSR was rather dramatic. The Union that was supposed to be unbreakable fell apart overnight like a house of cards blown away by a light breeze.’ (Segizbaev 2003, 5)
Expressed eloquently in this quote by Kazakh philosopher Oraz Segizbaev, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was undoubtedly a moment of immense and deep transformation. The change affected all aspects of state and society from the macro – with the subsequent creation of fifteen independent states, some coming into being for the very first time – to the micro level impact on the lives of nearly 300 million people.
As a social institution with a formal history stretching back at least 70 years, it seemed inevitable that the newly (re-)independent systems of higher education across the former Soviet space would be radically altered by the breakdown of the previous political order. This assertion is underpinned by ideas from new institutionalism, which posit that ‘radical institutional reconfigurations’ (Kwiek 2016, 193) are often the result of radical changes. Indeed, multiple studies of all corners of the former Soviet space demonstrate the many ways in which higher education has changed significantly since 1991, whether through system differentiation (e.g. Huisman, Smolentseva, and Froumin 2018), adopting ‘global’ norms (e.g. Oleksiyenko 2014; Tamtik and Sabzalieva 2018) or marketization/commercialization (e.g. Reeves 2005; Brue and MacPhee 1995).
And yet, whilst the path of change seems overwhelming and inevitable, I have found in my empirical research that certain aspects of higher education have on the contrary been extremely durable over time. Durability is particularly evident in relation to higher education-related norms and values. Drawing on Clemens and Cook (1999), I define durability as the ability to withstand pressure or damage without precluding modification as a condition of persistence. This differs from continuity, often seen as the flip side to any discussion of change.
The notion of durability enables me to explain how certain norms and legacies brought forward from the Soviet period have persisted in higher education, albeit often in altered forms. This study draws on the findings from 36 in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews with experienced faculty members in the former Soviet spaces of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Through the narratives of these faculty members, this study focuses on the academic profession as a site of durability. I find that long service and in-depth organizational understanding are posited as virtues that help to perpetuate the durability of higher education. This durability is seen very clearly in the example of faculty working at the Academy of Sciences in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan where, as one respondent put it, despite recent changes, ‘we have kept our traditions’.
The originality of this paper lies in its problematizing of the durability of norms and values in higher education. Whilst there is no doubt that the academic profession in the former Soviet space is changing, I argue that only by weaving in notions of durability can we adequately understand the complexity of those changes.
References:
Brue, Stanley L., and Craig R. MacPhee. 1995. “From Marx to Markets: Reform of the University Economics Curriculum in Russia.” The Journal of Economic Education 26 (2): 182–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220485.1995.10844870.
Clemens, Elisabeth S., and James M. Cook. 1999. “Politics and Institutionalism: Explaining Durability and Change.” Annual Review of Sociology, January, 441–66.
Huisman, Jeroen, Anna Smolentseva, and Isak D. Froumin, eds. 2018. 25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries: Reform and Continuity. Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan. //www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319529790.
Kwiek, Marek. 2016. “Constructing Universities as Organisations: University Reforms in Poland in the Light of Institutional Theory.” In Ideologies in Educational Administration and Leadership, edited by Eugénie Angèle. Samier, 193–215. New York, NY: Routledge.
Oleksiyenko, Anatoly. 2014. “Socio-Economic Forces and the Rise of the World-Class Research University in the Post-Soviet Higher Education Space: The Case of Ukraine.” European Journal of Higher Education 4 (3): 249–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2014.916537.
Reeves, Madeleine. 2005. “Of Credits, Kontrakty and Critical Thinking: Encountering ‘Market Reforms’ in Kyrgyzstani Higher Education.” European Educational Research Journal 4 (1): 5–21. https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2005.4.1.4.
Segizbaev, Oraz Amangalievich. 2003. Preobrazovanie sotsializma v rynok: prichiny, posledstviya i problemy: kratkiy sotsialno-ekonomicheskiy ocherk [The transformation of socialism to the market: Causes, consequences and issues. A short socio-economic review]. Almaty: Tip. operativnoĭ pechati.
Tamtik, Merli, and Emma Sabzalieva. 2018. “Emerging Global Players? Building International Legitimacy in Universities in Estonia and Kazakhstan.” In Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Education in Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union, edited by Maia Chankseliani and Iveta Silova, 127–45. Oxford: Symposium Books. http://www.symposium-books.co.uk/bookdetails/104/.
 

Author

• Emma Sabzalieva, University of Toronto