Modernization Problems of Higher Education in Kyrgyzstan

Overview & Synopsis

In this article, the author discusses and presents some modernization problems of Kyrgyzstan's higher education. These problems are: (1) The low quality of the services of professional education that are offered; (2) In the republic as a whole, the qualitative makeup of the corps of instructors is clearly deteriorating; (3) The services of professional education are of low consumer quality in the labor market; (4) The institutions of higher learning are failing to conduct special research on the labor market; (5) The unsatisfactory market sense (marketing) of the population with respect to its purchase of the services of higher professional education; (6) The prevalence of private higher professional education in the republic; (7) The inadequate level of involvement of the public in solving the problems of higher professional education in the republic; and (8) The ineffectiveness of administrative structures of educational institutions. It is recommended that the government of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan to take the following measures: (1) Increase the state's requirements for specialists of top qualifications up to the level at which the new wave of the economy's cadre needs are met; (2) Assign cadre training for a first higher education only to state institutions of higher learning, and in the case of a second, third, or further higher education only to nonstate institutions; (3) Establish in legislative form the indicator "level of satisfaction of labor market demands" as a criterion for the social rating of the performance of state-run and nonstate institutions of higher learning; (4) Create state statistics based on surveys of employers, or similar reporting and forecasting documentation; (5) Add to the law "On Advertising" a section that spells out the rules that govern the advertising of services of professional education; (6) Implement state regulation of the prices of nonstate services of higher professional education by setting normative upper and lower limits and (7) Create research centers in the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Education to work together to accomplish the task of orienting the system of professional education toward the requirements of the professional labor market.