Revitalizing the Soviet Higher Education Export: Comparative Case Study of IBCs in Six Post-Soviet Countries

• In Event: Internationalization and student mobility in higher education

Proposal

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet higher education (hereafter, HE) systems of its fifteen breakaway republics became a testing ground for neoliberal policies and reform packages (Smolentseva et al., 2018; see also Silova and Steiner-Khamsi, 2008). In research literature, international branch campus (hereafter, IBC) has been referred to as “an entity that is owned, at least in part, by a foreign education provider; operated in the name of the foreign education provider; and provides an entire academic program, substantially on site, leading to a degree awarded by the foreign education provider” (Garrett, Merola, and Kinser, 2016).

Branch campus development has been a commonly used instrument to export Soviet higher education to the Eastern Bloc countries and their allies during the Cold War era (Arefiev & Sheregi, 2014). In fact, the establishment of IBCs in the post-Soviet space dates back to 1960s (Arefiev & Sheregi, 2014). Just during the years 1960-1991, the USSR established 66 HEIs (universities, institutes, university centers, specialized faculties and branches), 23 specialized vocational schools, and more than 400 professional-technical education centers in 36 foreign countries (p. 13). As a legal heir to the Soviet Union today, various Russian universities maintain 45 branch campuses in 13 countries across post-Soviet Eurasia, Europe, Asia, and Middle East, including 37 of them located in the post-Soviet space (Arefiev, 2017).

In this study, I explore the post-Soviet IBC phenomenon – the emergence of IBCs in a lesser-known and unique context of Russia and post-Soviet region – to critically examine how Western IBC development practices might explain this cross-border phenomenon. In particular, this paper sheds light on the branch campus initiatives undertaken by the largest Russian IBC-exporting institution, the Lomonosov Moscow State University (hereafter, LMSU). As the oldest comprehensive university in Russia with a reputation for being the beacon of science in the post-Soviet Eurasia, LMSU is also the highest-ranked Russian higher education institution (hereafter, HEI) according to the international university rankings (Marginson, 2014). Extending its reach globally, LMSU has set up eight educational institutions in the post-Soviet region – Sevastopol, Ukraine (1999), Astana, Kazakhstan (2000), Tashkent, Uzbekistan (2006), Baku, Azerbaijan (2008), Dushanbe, Tajikistan (2009), and Yerevan, Armenia (2015) – and more recently, in Shenzen, China (2016) and Koper, Slovenia (2017). This study uses institutions as the units of analysis. The cases in my sample are the six LMSU branch campuses in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

To capture the complexity and diversity of branch campuses along with the historical, sociopolitical, and cultural context of such educational partnerships, I adapt and use the five lenses analytic framework developed by Maeroff, Callan, and Usdan (2001). With the help of the five lenses, I examine the post-Soviet IBC phenomenon through the adapted domains of (1) governance and leadership, (2) access and values, (3) standards and procedures, (4) academic personnel, and (5) larger community.

The research design of this study has been informed by the comparative case study (CCS) and qualitative methodology. According to Bartlett & Vavrus (2017), to be able to make conclusions about “the phenomenon of interest that extend beyond a single, putatively-bounded site” (p. 80), case study should be designed as a multi-scalar research. This allows the researcher to observe the phenomenon across the local, national and global levels or as defined in this study via micro-, meso-, and macro-level manifestations of IBC discourses and entities. The following research questions guide my investigation:

1. How, if at all, do the micro-level factors explain the similarities and differences among the LMSU international branch campuses (IBCs) in six post-Soviet countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan)?

2. To what extent, if at all, do the meso- and macro-level factors explain the main characteristics of these six LMSU IBCs?

I drew on purposeful sampling to select 176 government-, university-level official and informational documents such as legal documents, financial reports, procedural guidelines, media reports, strategy blueprint, annual reports as well as curricular materials pertinent to LMSU head and branch campuses, among many others. After preliminary analysis, the final sample was narrowed down to focus on the five lenses framework and included 82 primary and secondary documents.

I find that the six LMSU branch campuses have been established in the period between 1999 and 2015. This period has been marked by major structural and strategic reforms in the Russian higher education field, namely increased privatization, “5-in-100 by 2020” global university rankings milestone and Russian educational export blueprint document. The LMSU branch campuses in the post-Soviet space present a unique example of IBCs that can be characterized by the following commonalities across institutions: (a) top-down governance, (b) rigid standards and procedures, and (c) centrality of the Russian language and culture to the identity of these institutions. The dominant themes across local-national-global axis are (d) selectivity and elite status of the LMSU IBCs, (e) the LMSU brand appeal, and (f) IBC as an instrument to boost LMSU standing in global rankings. Since this case study research has been conducted using the LMSU and branch campus websites, my findings might be limited due to the self-serving bias.

This study is a first of its kind as it explores a rather understudied phenomenon of the post-Soviet IBCs. Situated in the historical context of the Soviet legacy of HE, I argue that the IBCs established by the Russian HEIs in the post-Soviet space present a unique case of HE export embedded in the multi-layered colonialism argument developed by Maia Chankseliani (2017). The main contribution of this research to literature on cross-border HE is the in-depth analysis of a relatively old but lesser-known form of IBC that is in many ways different from the Western conception of branch campuses. As a future exploration, this study might be extended to study the motivations and drivers behind the post-Soviet IBC phenomenon, especially in the context of HE export-import between the former Soviet republics.

Author

• Abbas Abbasov, Teachers College, Columbia University