Who Funds the Production of Globally Visible Research in the Global South? Bilateral, philanthropic, and multilateral research funding in the Caucasus and Central Asia

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Cross-country comparative studies of educational reform in Eurasia

Proposal

The study aimed to explore how the supranational influence has shaped the transformation of higher education in seven post-Soviet countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the Caucasus, and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in Central Asia.
While higher education is often viewed as ‘borderless’ nowadays, it is deeply national. It is embedded within the legislative structures, cultural traditions, socio-economic and political history and aspirations of a nation-state. At the same time, higher education goes beyond the national. Academics, students, and higher education institutions across the world benefit from cross-border flows of finances, knowledge and people to stimulate and sustain their educational and research activities. This study defines the supranational in higher education as influences which transcend the nation-state. The prefix ‘supra’ translates into English as ‘beyond’ and also as ‘above’. These two English-language equivalents of ‘supra’ bring nuance to the proposed conceptualisation of the supranational in higher education. ‘Above’ introduces a connotation of hierarchy in the relations between the national and supranational. The supranational in higher education can be viewed as flows from above, which lead to isomorphism. However, ‘beyond’ does not carry a hierarchical connotation. ‘Beyond’ assumes that supranational flows are horizontal and/or circular. The supranational in higher education encompasses everything that is beyond the national in higher education. This study categorised all supranational agencies working in higher education into three types: multilateral - involving three or more governments (e.g. European Commission, World Bank, Asian Development Bank), bilateral - involving a single country’s government (e.g. Russia, China, Germany, Turkey), and philanthropic - private initiatives for the public good (e.g. OSF, Aga Khan Foundation, Elsevier).
Using a mixed methods research design, the study involved several phases of data collection and analysis: a mapping of major higher education initiatives by multilateral, bilateral, and philanthropic actors in the region, an online survey of 87 universities across seven countries, and individual interviews with policy-makers in each study country.
The integrated findings suggest that supranational flows of knowledge and finances have played a key role in remaking the post-Soviet higher education landscape. The paper focuses on three main domains of influence: universities’ institutional development, access to higher education, and research capacity development.
One of the key areas where the supranational influence has shaped higher education most prominently is the institutional development of universities. There have been significant flows of funding and knowledge to support universities in the professional development of their staff, design of academic programmes and upgrade of physical infrastructure. The Bologna Process and the EHEA are by far the most frequently discussed processes in the policy and practitioner discourses on universities’ institutional development. The supranational space of the Bologna Process/EHEA has been seen as “the silver bullet” for transforming the Soviet HE into ‘the Western’, ‘European’ HE. A lot of resources from supranational agencies, such as the European Commission and the World Bank, went into designing the quality assurance systems at universities in the Bologna Process member states (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan). Non-member states such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan have also been making significant steps towards standardisation.
The Bologna Process has introduced the structural, formal changes to qualifications, credit, and quality assurance systems. However, there are questions about the positive impact of these major changes on the content and substance of courses, or much needed institutional autonomy and academic freedom across the region. The survey responses show critical engagement with the process of standardisation and bureaucratisation of higher education in the region.
Another major area of supranational engagement is higher education access with a focus on supporting international student mobility. While the Bologna Process might have led to rigid structures of quality assurance and a certain standardisation of educational provision, it has undoubtedly supported student flows across the EHEA. The impact of the flows of students and academics, however, might be limited due to the level of bureaucratisation and standardisation of higher education. The study findings pointed to an aspiration to expand inbound mobility flows by making the Caucasus and Central Asian universities more attractive to international students.
The third domain of supranational influence is the development of university research capacity. The survey findings demonstrated that the impact of supranational flows has been relatively limited in this area. While policy-makers underscored the magnitude of national funding going into research, the analysis of the Elsevier data on the funders of globally visible publications shows that only 1-2% of publications are funded by the national governments except for Kazakhstan.
The analysis highlights the importance of more equal, bottom-up regional partnerships for transforming national higher education policies and practices and proposes to mobilise supranational and local actors to respond to existing challenges.

Author

• Maia Chankseliani, University of Oxford