Quality in Kyrgyzstan: Licensure and accreditation of medical schools that admit international students

• In Event: External Influences on Education in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia

Proposal

Digital technologies, specifically university websites, permit prospective international students to research institutions from far away. Major life choices, with substantial personal and financial implications, can be made based on online information. Therefore, evidence of institutional quality is important. This research investigates the evidence of quality, defined as licensure and accreditation, presented on the websites of the 22 medical schools in Kyrgyzstan that provide programs for international students. Review of institutional, accreditation agency, and Ministry of Education websites was supplemented with analysis of legal documents, formal and informal interviews with university and accreditation agency staff, participant observations while the author lived in Kyrgyzstan for 3.5 months in 2024 and provided trainings for university and accreditation agency staffs, plus the author’s long-term prior research visits and employment there.

Interactions between massification, internationalization, privatization, and questions of quality form the research framework. Rising incomes and the massification of higher education in South Asia mean that many more students seek the prestige of a medical degree than home country institutions can accommodate. For students seeking education elsewhere, Kyrgyzstan, with its relatively close geographic proximity and affordable tuition and living expenses, has become popular, at least until the May 2024 violence against foreigners, both medical students (primarily Pakistanis) and low-wage workers in sewing shops (primarily Bangladeshis).

As the government has permitted private universities to operate since 1993, and the institutional licensing process is relatively simple, 15 medical schools have opened or added English-taught sections leading to the degrees South Asian students need in the last ten years; 10 of these have opened in the last five years. Eleven of the 22 medical schools are accredited by one private accreditation agency, AAEPO, the Agency for the Accreditation of Educational Programs and Organizations. AAEPO is the only one of the six private accreditation agencies in Kyrgyzstan that is recognized by the World Federation of Medical Education (WFME), and thus its accreditations are sought after. However, the sheer number of programs accredited by this small agency (for example, 57 program accreditations awarded at one institution on one day, the 19th of June, 2020) raises questions.

The contribution is original and provides new insights in several ways. Medical schools in Kyrgyzstan have been studied in terms of their economic contribution (Jenish, 2012), but that research was done before the current explosion in the numbers of institutions. News reports have examined issues of quality in medical schools, and the Ministry of Health’s 2022 recommendation that 17 of them be closed, but the licensure and accreditation of them has not previously been systematically reviewed. Also, this list of medical schools is more complete than others. The process required of AAEPO to become certified by the WFME has not previously been described in the scholarly literature. The May 2024 violence against South Asians in Bishkek, while widely covered in Kyrgyzstani, South Asian, and international news sources (the author has collected over 140 articles) has not been considered in the scholarly literature with relation to medical school enrollments and the proliferation of schools.

Author

• MARTHA C MERRILL, Kent State University