Higher miseducation

Has Kazakhstan's educational policy gone astray?

In higher education, Kazakhstan doesn’t harvest the forest because it perceives only a few trees.

During the early years of independence, the government cut back sharply on its funding of colleges, which now amounts to less than a third of a percent of the size of the economy (measured as gross domestic product), according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a research group comprising rich nations.  Of this amount, more than a third goes to Nazarbayev University, which the government regards as the country’s flagship among research universities, and to the Bolashak program, which finances advanced study abroad.  This leaves less than a fifth of one percent of GDP of public funds for all other schools of higher education. 

Among them, the government favors vocational and technical colleges. This year it announced its intent to make this education free, which may accelerate the long-term rise in their share of all students of higher education, already above half despite a slight drop in the past few years. Free vocational education may be a step towards diversifying the economy away from oil exports, which account for roughly a fourth of GDP.

The logic behind this policy is a little shaky.  At the margin, graduates of vocational schools will realize most of the value of their education in the form of higher wages.  As long as they can borrow money for school, they seem likely to choose the right amount of education by comparing its value to its cost (such as the wages foregone by studying rather than working for three years).

Wild swings

Yes, vocational education might also confer a value on society, rather than on the graduate, by diversifying the economy, since this mitigates the oscillations in GDP that stem from volatile oil prices. The youth might not take this value into account when she mulls going to college.  But aside from this, the market will provide enough vocational education even if the students pay full tuition.

The area that may be under-funded is liberal arts education, ranging from art history to political science.  This education creates general skills for solving such problems as how to reduce inequality in the nation’s distribution of income – problems that matter to society but that do not necessarily offer high wages motivating anyone to seek a solution.  The OECD notes that general problem-solving skills are much weaker in Kazakhstan than in the West.

Liberal arts also promote a sense of civility among graduates that makes life pleasant for all of us. The youth contemplating college cannot cash in these benefits as higher wages, so he is likely to ignore them when choosing his field of study.  A subsidy to the liberal arts may correct this deficiency.

The OECD has complained that Nazarbayev University’s share of public funds is too large to benefit higher education. “At best, this is an experiment that carries substantial risks: It is an open question whether any excellence that the university may achieve can outweigh reduced funding for the rest of the [higher education] system.” It could have said the same thing about Kazakhstan’s skimpy funding of colleges in general. –Leon Taylor tayloralmaty@gmail.com

References

OECD (2017).  Higher education in Kazakhstan 2017, Reviews of national policies for education. OECD Publishing, Paris.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264268531-en