External Influences on Education in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The CIES 2025 conference theme, Envisioning Education in a Digital Society, reflects the fact that external influences affect education. Each of our papers considers the impact of digital technologies on education, as well as the effects of other external factors in shaping educational policies and practices in Central Asia and adjacent regions.

Elise Ahn examines the rise of foreign influence and foreign actor policies and their application to the higher education sector in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Conventional understanding of education policy focused on the role of the nation state. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, the era of neoliberal globalization, regulatory actors such as the WTO’s GATS agreement began to affect institutional and national policies. However, since the early 2000s, there has been a steady fracturing of neoliberal globalization as new alliances of autocrats and authoritarian regimes work to create both policy and economic alternatives (Applebaum, 2024). Such regimes pressure higher education institutions to ensure that “foreign powers” do not exert what those regimes consider to be malign influence (Ahn, 2022). In this context, the idea of a “digital society” takes a negative turn as data surveillance instruments are used by 21st century actors whose rationales for internationalization differ sharply from the “peace and understanding” idealism of the late 20th century.

Martha Merrill considers the complex interaction of massification, internationalization, privatization, and questions of quality. Rising incomes and the massification of higher education in South Asia means that many more students seek the prestige of a medical degree than their home country institutions can accommodate. Those students thus seek medical education in other countries, often relying on the digital technology of websites to make major life decisions. Kyrgyzstan, with its relatively close geographic proximity to South Asia and affordable tuition and living expenses, has become a popular destination for many such students, at least until the May 2024 violence against foreigners, both medical students (primarily Pakistanis) and low-wage workers in sewing shops (primarily Bangladeshis), violence engendered by a false narrative attached to digital images. As the Kyrgyz government has permitted private higher education institutions to operate since 1993, and the institutional licensing process is simpler than it is in many surrounding countries, a number of private medical schools have opened in Kyrgyzstan in the last five years, and some of the public medical schools have added English-taught sections leading to the degrees South Asian students need. By the author’s count, 22 medical schools now are operating in Kyrgyzstan. Eleven of them 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 on one day, the 19th of June, 2020) raises questions about the quality of those reviews.

Chynarkul Ryskulova examines the problematic coexistence of the Ph.D. and the Soviet-era Aspirantura in Kyrgyzstan. In her earlier research, she interviewed students to determine why they had chosen one program or the other. Results indicated that the Kyrgyz government requirements that Ph.D. students do an internship abroad of at least a month and that they have an international supervisor were deterrents that caused some students to select the Aspirantura. The costs of the internship abroad and paying for the travel and other expenses of an international supervisor often were prohibitive for prospective Ph.D. students. Moreover, finding and working with an international supervisor often demands a scholarly level of knowledge of another language, which not all prospective graduate students possess. Thus external factors – government requirements, financial considerations, and language knowledge – rather than educational considerations were major motivators in prospective students’ decision making.

Dr. Ryskulova now is turning her attention to the results of each degree. Ph.D. programs, which require access to online data bases and participation in online fora and professional groups, were initiated in Kyrgyzstan on a pilot basis in 2013, whereas the Aspirantura, leading to a Kandidat Nauk degree, is a Soviet-era holdover that does not exist outside of the former Soviet space. Graduates of both programs now are working in Kyrgyzstan. However, it is not clear if and how the outcomes for recipients of the two degrees differ. To date, no study has been done of results for domestic students who have chosen each of these options. This research will consider two indicators of program results: first, what members of the dissertation councils in different disciplines at the six largest public universities in Kyrgyzstan report regarding their practices and involvements with dissertation defenses for Kandidat Nauks and Ph.D. dissertations; and second, what graduate students who have chosen each option say about their experiences.

C. Michael Whitsel investigates the ways in which gender norms and school quality affect girls’ attendance at school in Tajikistan. Utilizing fieldwork data collected from 2006-2013, which he analyzed digitally, he determines that although gender norms are a strong factor influencing school attendance, students also have the ability to advocate for themselves. The digitally analyzed data show that gender norms and school quality factors interact in particular ways to affect educational outcomes. For example, parents value girls’ safety because of norms relating to chastity. Thus whether or not the school has enough teaching staff to monitor behavior of teenage school children becomes a concern for parents. However, female students with particular talents have been able to advocate for themselves and their desire to continue schooling. The effects of community-level gender norms on school attendance thus are more complex than simply keeping girls out of school.

Our panel thus considers a number of external factors – new laws, massification, internationalization, privatization, financial constraints, and community gender norms – which, in addition to the pervasiveness of the digital society, affect education in Central Asia and adjacent regions.

Sub Unit

• Europe and Central Asia SIG

Chairs

• MARTHA C MERRILL, Kent State University

• Pakiza Shirinova, Kent Sate University

Individual Presentations

• Quality in Kyrgyzstan: Licensure and accreditation of medical schools that admit international students - MARTHA C MERRILL, Kent State University

• The rise of foreign influence and foreign actor policies in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia - Elise S Ahn, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Aspirantura and Ph.D. outcomes: The perspectives of students and Dissertation Council members in Kyrgyzstan - Chynarkul Ryskulova, American University of Central Asia

• Influence of gender norms and school quality on children’s educational participation - christopher whitsel, North Dakota State University