Lost in Transition : Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic [1 ed.] 9781617352324, 9781617352300

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DEYOUNG

LOST IN TRANSITION

Being a “student” has been and remains a highly desirable status for young people and their families in Kyrgyzstan. “Giving their children education” (dat detyam obrazovaniye)—meaning “higher education”— has become an imperative for many parents, even in a time of serious economic and social decline. The numbers of universities and university enrollments have increased dramatically—in fact quadrupled—since Kyrgyz independence from the former USSR in 1991. All this is happening just as the overall system of secondary education has basically collapsed. School quality and outcomes of learning for most Kyrgyz youth have become increasingly marginal—even as those who run universities widely proclaim quality improvements and desires/intentions to join international higher education space. The book thus seeks to explain the manifest versus the latent functions of higher education in Kyrgyzstan. Relying on explanations of lived experience, the research attempts to explain how the seeming contradiction of a declining resource and intellectual base of universities yet appeals to parents and students as the system continues to expand with few accountability measures. The study approaches these topics by seeking to define what it now means to be a university student in Kyrgyzstan, as well as what a state university has turned into in contrast to how they were remembered by those who attended and taught within them two decades ago. The work also considers a number of private and inter-governmental universities sponsored by other countries which are allowed to operate in Kyrgyzstan and award both state and international diplomas. I portray the different organizational and ideological pursuits of these universities as they contrast with those of the state universities.

LOST IN TRANSITION REDEFINING STUDENTS AND UNIVERSITIES IN THE CONTEMPORARY KYRGYZ REPUBLIC

Lost in Transition is an empirical look at higher education reform in Kyrgyzstan, employing several methodological strategies. These include a student survey given to over 200 students at five different universities; surveys and interviews with senior instructors and administrators at these same institutions; and a two-year case student of a particular university faculty in one of the larger state universities of the country. The case student utilized participant observation, ethnographic interviews, and document analysis.

ALAN J. DEYOUNG UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

IAP—INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING P.O. BOX 79049 CHARLOTTE, NC 28271-7047 WWW.INFOAGEPUB.COM

A VOLUME IN: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON EDUCATIONAL POLICY, RESEARCH AND PRACTICE SERIES Safety Area: All Text, Logos & Barcode should remain inside the Pink Dotted Bleed Area: All Backgrounds should extend to, but not past, the Blue Dotted

Lost in Transition Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

A Volume in International Perspectives on Educational Policy, Research and Practice Series Editor: Kathryn M. Borman University of South Florida

International Perspectives on Educational Policy, Research and Practice Kathryn M. Borman Series Editor The Challenges of Education in Central Asia (2006) Edited by Stephen P. Heyneman and Alan J. De Young Educational Restructuring: International Perspectives on Traveling Policies (2006) Edited by Sverker Lindblad and Tom Popkewitz Immigrant Youth Who Excel: Globalization’s Uncelebrated Heroes (2006) By Rivka A. Eisikovits International Perspectives on Bilingual Education: Policy, Practice, and Controversy (2006) Edited by John E. Petrovic Nordic Childhoods and Early Education: Philosophy, Research, Policy and Practice in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden (2006) Edited by Johanna Einarsdottir and John A. Wagner Surviving the Transition? Case Studies of Schools and Schooling in the Kyrgyz Republic (2006) Edited by Alan J. De Young, Madeleine Reeves, and Galina K. Valyayeva

Lost in Transition Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

Alan J. DeYoung University of Kentucky

INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC. Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data DeYoung, Alan J. Lost in transition : redefining students and universities in the contemporary Kyrgyz Republic / Alan J. DeYoung. p. cm. -- (International perspectives on educational policy, research, and practice) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-61735-230-0 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-61735-231-7 (hardcover) -ISBN 978-1-61735-232-4 (e-book) 1. Education, Higher--Kyrgyzstan. 2. College students--Kyrgyzstan. 3. Educational change--Kyrgyzstan. I. Title. LA1386.4.D49 2011 378.5843--dc22 2010045147

Copyright © 2011 Information Age Publishing Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................. vii 1

Education and Socialization: Deconstructing the Soviet Imperative ...................................................................................... 1

2

Students Making Decisions about the University ..........................15

3

On Being a Student at Bishkek New University: Social Scenes and Situations ............................................................................... 35

4

On Being a Student at Bishkek New University: Students, Student Groups, and Classes .........................................................61

5

University Use and University Quality: Then and Now ................ 83

6

Faculty of Foreign Languages: Academic Culture Compromised ..............................................................................103

7

Concluding Remarks and International Perspectives on the Kyrgyz Higher Education Scene ..................................................141

8

Appendix .....................................................................................161 References ...................................................................................167 v

Globalization Comes to the Kyrgyz Republic

INTRODUCTION

This book is about what it means to be a university student in the Kyrgyz Republic. Being a “student” has been and remains a highly desirable status for young people and their families in Kyrgyzstan—“giving their children education” (dat detyam obrazovaniye), implying “higher education,” has become an imperative for many parents, and even more today than 20 years ago in Soviet times. The number of universities and university enrollments have increased dramatically—in fact, quadrupled—in this former Soviet republic since its independence in 1991. Almost every other secondary school graduate, and an even greater proportion of students from urban areas, enters the universities, two-thirds of which are located in the capital city of Bishkek. All this is happening just as the overall system of secondary education has experienced significant declines in funding, infrastructure, and teacher qualifications, and consequently,in quality. Schools, however, continue to report their students’ academic achievements at levels similar to those seen prior to national independence. They proudly exhibit the number of their graduates who have been admitted to university as measurable proof of educational quality and student achievement. My interest in higher education matters actually grew from my earlier research on secondary educaLost in Transition: Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic pages vii–xiv Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing vii All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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tion, particularly rural education, in Kyrgyzstan. Studying the challenges of Kyrgyz secondary schools in the “transition” period from socialism to a market economy, I encountered a number of seeming contradictions. Current graduates, quantifiably less qualified than before, not only enter universities in mass, but their inadequate preparation appears no barrier to university study or graduation. Almost everyone who enters university, no matter the talent level or previous preparation, appears to graduate.

SEARCHING FOR EXPLANATIONS How tertiary education can geometrically expand when actual achievement levels of secondary education contract seems a major question in exploring the current education scene in Kyrgyzstan. And this paradox is connected to a number of others: higher education is far more costly today compared to Soviet times. Before, secondary school graduates who were admitted to the university received full funding from the state to continue their education. Today, only partial subsidies are available for a small percentage of students, and everyone else pays full freight, without the benefit of student loans or grants. Furthermore, parents and extended families pay the bulk of tuition, even though most of these families have far fewer economic resources than before. Also, unlike the previous organization of Kyrgyz higher education, today’s state universities no longer have direct links to the employment of their graduates. In Soviet times, universities admitted students in quantities determined by various ministries, and they assigned (raspredelyali) their graduates to job vacancies determined by the government. Students did not have to make “career choices” once admitted to the university. Nor were universities primarily responsible for helping them to “market” their skills. Direct links between the university and occupational placements are mostly gone, and nothing formal has taken their place. Reliance upon kinship networks and personal connections, always partially evident, has re-emerged as the primary mechanism for career entry and advancement. Increased demand for higher education in Kyrgyzstan is not consistent with national economic development, either. Kyrgyzstan went into a severe economic recession in the middle 1990s and has not fully recovered. Although recessions usually explain post-secondary enrollment gains in developed countries, this alone cannot account for the Kyrgyz situation. The sorts of vocational and technical programs which are often undertaken by unemployed workers in order to upgrade their skills are the very programs that have almost disappeared in contemporary Kyrgyzstan. Many enrollment gains here are in humanities, international business, and marketing specializations which the local economy cannot absorb. Government min-

INTRODUCTION • ix

istries and international donors concur that the national economy requires many new workers with skills in small-scale agriculture and services rather than those with five-year university diplomas. Meanwhile, the quality of higher education is even worse than it was before. Common complaints heard from faculty are that since universities have become quasi-private and charge tuition, standards have been declining while enrollments surge; new fields of study are often administered and taught by those who have had little exposure to the fields they purport to teach, and there are far fewer instructional resources. Furthermore, international observers suggest that much of the higher education problem in Kyrgyzstan rests with matters of education control: organizational models and personnel persist from the previous Soviet era. Also, there are few external academic standards by which to judge outcomes of higher education, no published indicators concerning of how successful the universities are in placing their graduates into the world of work, and the relevance of some fields of study for the present occupational needs of the country is dubious. Regardless of the seeming mismatch between higher education expansion, on the one hand, and the catastrophic situation of secondary education and intractable crises in the occupational sector on the other, students’ demand to access universities grows, and parents and families are willing to pay constantly rising tuition. Seeking to explain what appeared to me to be compelling 21st century educational contradictions, I initially intended to describe and discuss concerns and issues in university academic cultures and subcultures. However, I soon realized that focusing upon the seeming mismatch of demand for higher education and its practical possibilities would have fallen into the trap of assuming that the primary purpose of the university here (or anywhere else) can be reduced to the transmission of new knowledge and better skills for a developing society and economy. I should have known better! As a sociologist of education, my academic tradition includes legions of theories and empirical research underscoring that the social and cultural purposes of schools and universities are just as important as the manifested instructional purposes (e.g., Durkheim, 1961; Collins, 1979; Merton, 1968; Sporn, 1996). I needed to alter my framework to consider more social uses of the university instead of focusing on economic utility, problems with instructional quality and applicability of acquired knowledge to future employment. These emerge as significant, but not essential, components of how students get into university and why they want to be there in the first place. Academic quality ends up being important in the eyes of some students, parents, and other stakeholders, but there are other critical considerations to take into account. This also means that much of what happens in contemporary state universities in Kyrgyzstan has other functions and dynamics little involving subject matter taught and its immediate economic

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usefulness. Thus this research spends some time exploring the varieties of university structure and function that encourage and enable students to enroll in programs that many of them do not study diligently and may never actually use.

USING AN ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACH This book is informed by social science traditions in education research which attempt to articulate the logic and dynamics of particular educational institutions to the larger surrounding social and cultural issues. I rely specifically upon survey and ethnographic methods to investigate how students and instructors experience and negotiate the cultures and subcultures of several universities (and one in particular). Alan Peshkin illustrates this anthropologically-based tradition of looking at institutions from the perspective of those who attend and operate there in his classic work Growing Up American (1978). Focusing on a rural American high school, he examined how the culture and politics of schooling were intertwined with the lives of adolescents moving from childhood into adulthood, and in what ways the teacher and administrative subcultures were involved in this process. Lois Weis (1985) used similar methods in her urban community college research on how minority students understood and negotiated their situations and possibilities there. In another classic work, Paul Willis (1977) investigated how local secondary school contexts were understood and either negotiated or rejected by working class boys in London in their transition to adulthood. Peshkin’s work, like the others, represents an important model of how to look at an educational institution as a larger functioning entity, not only as an instructional site. My research, utilizing similar perspectives, is aiming to explore “growing up” in Kyrgyzstan. These days, the “growing up” process of making individual decisions related to the future happens not only in secondary schools, but also in post-secondary institutions. In many cases, formal higher education around the globe has moved from elite to mass and even universal, encompassing around half or even more secondary education graduates (Trow, 1961; 1972). This is where most professional and occupational skills are now learned and societal values are being impressed, and where young people can find new opportunities and novel experiences. This is certainly the case in Kyrgyzstan. Complicating the global trends of growing post-secondary education demand is the situation of a place like Kyrgyzstan, where the society is undergoing dramatic changes related to the politics and economics of a transition to a global economy. Educational opportunities and markets here are affected by both international trends and national political forces.

INTRODUCTION • xi

This study involves how national and international political and economic trends affect higher education institutions in the country, as well as how young people negotiate the social and public spaces that are themselves changing due to the geopolitics of the country.

DATA SOURCES AND STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK The research reported in this book comes from survey data, ethnographic interviews, participant observation, and analysis of university documents, publicly available information from websites, and social network media. The data was collected between 2006 and 2010 during extended periods of fieldwork in the Kyrgyz Republic, as well as internet and social networking data collected throughout the period of study. The structure of the book reflects these different data sources, progressing from student surveys to participant observation, to faculty surveys and interviews with students, instructors, parents, and administrators. The first and last chapters rely on mass media and publicly available information. Chapter 1 is focused on deconstructing the previous Soviet imperative in education and socialization. Here I consider both the instructional and social upbringing functions of the Soviet school, and discuss the educational aims and structures created during the Soviet power to socialize and educate young people throughout all national republics. Then, general economic, social, and educational issues related to the missions of schools and universities and current difficulties young people face today are pursued. I also overview growing public dissatisfaction with secondary and higher education as expressed in the Central Asian and Kyrgyz news agencies and mass media. Chapter 2 is about how students (and their parents) make decisions about the university, and is based upon survey results from students I worked with in five Kyrgyz universities in Bishkek. Relying upon my various experiences as lecturer, guest speaker, or teacher in these universities, I constructed questionnaires in 2007 and 2008 that were administered to over 200 students. Questions dealt with student aspirations, expectations, and concerns related to university life, as well as with their impressions of university quality and prestige. Between 2007 and 2009, in addition to distributing, collecting, and analyzing surveys, I also was a participant observer and worked intensely with several student cohorts at one university as their teacher. Chapters 3 and 4, both about being a student, is a case study concerning the social and academic scenes and settings at one prominent state university where several thousand students are enrolled. Using ethnographic methods, it is more descriptive than analytical. In these chapters, I provide detail and discus-

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sion about student lives and about how the students I worked with understood and negotiated their environments and interacted with teachers, administrators, and each other. I also make use of interviews collected over this timeframe which illuminate parent and community expectations and norms related to student lives, and show how my students hoped to use (or not use) their higher educational experiences in their futures. Chapter 5, University Uses and University Quality: Then and Now, returns to the topic which garnered some discussion in Chapter 1: how is the university in Kyrgyzstan different than it was before? This chapter relies on data from a short, open-ended survey administered to senior faculty, as well as on the voices of six former faculty members who remain in or are still connected to higher education institutions. Many of the voices heard here complain about declining standards of university academic quality and professional dedication at the national level. Chapter 6 revisits academic culture and matters of teaching and learning in one faculty (or department) of the primary ethnographic location of this study. It seeks to describe and analyze more specifically the academic climate and undertakings of students whose social lives and academic activities were discussed in Chapter 3 and 4. It gives further perspective on how students and teachers understand why they are pursuing academic and professional goals, as well as the barriers they perceive which prevent them from more fully achieving these goals. Chapter 7 considers several international higher education reform initiatives on-going in other Central Asia countries with implications for Kyrgyzstan, and suggests how and why such initiatives are often resisted by the education ministry and by particular universities. The chapter presents higher education options in the country made available by several intergovernmental and private universities with international sponsors. Most of these universities (underwritten by Turkish, Russian, and American governments) were mentioned or discussed in previous survey results and present in student testimonies. The chapter attempts to overview the aims and facilities of these universities, with particular attention to how they market their agendas in ways that make them look desirable to students and parents. Possible “soft power” agendas of sponsoring governments and private sources are also analyzed. Much of the data for this discussion comes from university websites, promotional materials, and the mass media.

NOTES ON RESEARCH METHODS, BIAS, AND CONFIDENTIALITY Most scholarship in education and social sciences is theoretically oriented and dedicated to some scholarly audience and literature. Typically the

INTRODUCTION • xiii

research specifies hypotheses to be tested where variables are clearly delineated and their effects and interactions are recorded. Within this tradition, I hypothesize and discuss the impact of globalization found at scenes also included in this work in another essay (DeYoung, 2010). This project, however, proceeds less analytically and is more concerned with description and hypothesis generation instead of hypothesis testing and analysis. I am primarily interested in describing behavior and explanations for behavior, and these explanations and interpretations given by the students, instructors, and administrators are a major part of the data. This is a common ethnographic stance in the study of education, where the interest is in investigating events and in understanding social life considered normal or routine to those defined as “students” or “teachers” (Spradley& McCurdy, 1972). How are “teaching” and “the teacher” defined and understood, for instance, within any particular university context? What is a “student,” and just as important, what does it mean “to study?” Virtually every educational institution I have ever spent time in uses the verb “to study” rather freely. Students in Kyrgyz universities talk about “studying” all the time, but where, what, and how they “studied” appeared different to me from how students “study” at my own university. Ethnographic or qualitative methods (as well as the surveys I use) do have their own biases. Although I have broadly studied the social and political context of Kyrgyzstan and performed ethnographic research in rural schools, almost all the questions posed for this project about Kyrgyz universities were influenced by my own understandings of how American and European institutions work. I try hard in the pages ahead to be as neutral as possible, but as a non-native, it can (and will) be argued that my work displays a predicable ethnocentric bias. Foreign bias actually has often been charged by politicians and citizens groups in Kyrgyzstan during the past 20 years. One effect of Kyrgyzstan being recognized as a darling of the West—since it was thought to be the most ready for transition to democracy and a market economy—was that the country received all manner of “technical assistance” to “improve” and “reform” existing economic and social institutions like the schools and universities. Many Kyrgyz citizens, however, failed to recognize they needed “improving” or “reforming” under the tutelage of Western experts. Some of this “us” ver sus “them” disagreement related to higher education reform is discussed in Chapter 7 and in another paper of mine (DeYoung, 2004). Given the possibility that my questions and interpretations are biased and potentially harmful to the reputations of my interviewees and informants, I conceal the actual identities of the individuals and institutions where I completed my fieldwork, creating pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of all participants quoted. I appreciate that some of them read early portions

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of this manuscript, and many of their insights and corrections have been included in the final manuscript.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I dedicate this book to the memory of my son Nathaniel Alan DeYoung who passed away in 2009. I would also like to thank my colleague, best friend, and wife Galina Valyayeva for her indispensable assistance in the conceptualization and completion of this book. She is from Central Asia, and her suggestions and critique were invaluable in every phase of this research. I had various sponsors over the years whose funding made travel in and within Kyrgyzstan possible. Most of the monies dedicated to this study were made available by the US Department of State under Title VIII. Thanks to NCEEER, ACCELS –ACTR, and IREX for their roles in facilitating my research under Title VIII. The College of Education at the University of Kentucky also contributed toward my travel and research. Finally, I want to express great gratitude towards those many instructors, students, parents, and administrators at the several universities where I collected data. My special thanks go to the particular university administrator and colleague of mine who paved my way to completing most of the fieldwork portions of this study. My hope is that all of their lives may be improved indirectly as a result of this work.

CHAPTER 1

EDUCATION AND SOCIALIZATION DECONSTRUCTING THE SOVIET IMPERATIVE

The system of education that independent Kyrgyzstan inherited from the Soviet Union gradually developed during the 20th century and was based upon the proclaimed goals of building a future socialist and communist society. During the twenty years since independence there was serious criticism of many Soviet educational practices and visible excitement about the possibilities of Western educational innovations. Later those were replaced by a more cautious attitude to such innovations, and growing belief that building the new national system of education should be based upon national values while at the same time borrowing best ideas and practices from both Western and Soviet models. Politicians and education policy makers and reformers in Kyrgyzstan often find themselves at the intersection of “then” and “now” and “here” and ”there” as they are trying to readjust goals and expectations of a newly created education system. Lost in Transition: Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic pages 1–14 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing 1 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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The purpose of this chapter is to provide historical background of the educational context which existed in Kyrgyzstan while it was one of the 15 Soviet Socialist Republics of the former Soviet Union. It also describes several key changes in the system of secondary and higher education which have occurred since independence. Many of these changes and currently perceived problems with the entire system of schools are then presented as highlighted in press accounts found in new Kyrgyz and Central Asian media sources. The chapter ends by briefly describing the existing university scene today in the capital city of Bishkek, where there is growing competition between state, inter-governmental, and private universities. THE SOVIET EDUCATIONAL LEGACY Kyrgyzstan is one of the five former Central Asian republics of the USSR, and before that, was part of the Russian Empire. It is considered a relatively poor country. The largest ethnic groups/tribes/clans living in Kyrgyzstan are ethnic Kyrgyz who speak a Turkic-based language. Yet before, during, and after the Soviet era, many other ethnic groups or nationalities also lived and continue to live within Kyrgyzstan—ethnic Russians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Ukrainians, etc.—about 100 nationalities in all. In the 19th century, the Kyrgyz were essentially a nomadic people, organized by tribe and clan (Roy, 2000; Collins, 2006). The possibilities and responsibilities of becoming adults were typically facilitated by and within the extended family: a boy might inherit his family’s livestock and become the head of an extended household,while girls would typically marry into their new husband’s household and become responsible for raising the next generation. In the 20th century, as the USSR became more mature, these former nomadic traditions were of little utility. Kyrgyz and other nomadic groups were forcefully settled and required to work mostly in agriculture or in cattle breeding on collective and state farms. The economic, social, and cultural patterns of the Kyrgyz and other Central Asian nationalities in what was Turkestan were intentionally targeted by the USSR for transformation, and the customs, kinship, and occupational patterns of indigenous people were to be replaced (Gleason, 1997). There were great literacy and other social organization reforms waged throughout the region which attempted to instill knowledge and values consistent with the building of a new socialist society, in which the many values and teachings of the past would no longer be acceptable. Formal education had become compulsory for all citizens first for four years, and then gradually for longer periods. In the past, before the breakup of the USSR, all Soviet children received at least “incomplete” secondary education (eight or nine years), and many more continued to finish a complete secondary education of ten or (later) eleven years. As a result of Soviet schooling policy, Kyrgyz society moved from being practically illiterate with no written language to having almost universal

EDUCATION AND SOCIALIZATION • 3

literacy (in Russian). Arguably, the possibility of schooling for all until late adolescence was more fully embraced as a great cultural opportunity by Soviet youth and their parents than it has historically been in the West (Holmes, Read, & Voskresenskaya, 1995). Among the prominent features of the Soviet educational system—which remains active in Kyrgyzstan—are a model utilizing a collectivist cohort/ group system of instruction, a state controlled curriculum, and an explicit socialization process of instilling appropriate (previously socialist) values as part of the educational model. At every level from primary through secondary and into higher education, the entire teaching/learning process organizes students into specific cohorts further divided by age and education level (grade) and into groups of 25–30 individuals. Often these groups within cohorts are organized by informal ability level. These groups are called “classes” at secondary schools and “groups” in post-secondary institutions. The term “class” as is commonly used in American education (for example, “what classes are you taking?”) makes no sense in this context: the words “subject” (predmet) or “lesson” (urok) are used. At the university, studies (zanyatiya) can take forms of lectures and seminars. In the lecture, students typically remain passive and take notes; in the seminar, they are expected to come prepared to be engaged in group discussion with the instructor. Since students undergo group instruction in common subject matter, individual choices and individual learning remain underdeveloped. The curriculum of all schools and universities are state controlled; all learning plans for school and university are approved by the education ministry of the country; and most subjects are mandatory. As a result of contemporary curriculum reform, the possibility of “electives” has increased within the school or university; yet all students will be subdivided into two or three groups to pursue such study. Required course content is specified into time segments during daily instruction. A school or university learning day involves from six to eight hours per day of mandatory attendance; either five or six days per week. This mandatory required instructional “seat time” is theoretically an important structural impediment to much Western curricular influence, since it allows for very little independent study outside of the classroom. In secondary schools and universities, students study as collectives. As a collective, secondary school students are supervised by one particular teacher (klassnyi rukovoditel) who is responsible for guiding them and for reporting to the school administration both the academic and “moral” development and progress of students over the years. In the university, this same function is assigned to a kurator. This model suggests how deeply engrained a collective socialization process was and remains as part of the school organization.

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Soviet youth policy created several formal groups (e.g., the Pioneers and the Komsomol) dedicated to political socialization. These groups were also networked within and by the schools or universities. As young adults (age 14–28), students were members of the Komsomol(Communist Union of Youth). They were basically organized by class within the school, and likewise by group within the university. By Perestroika, participation in socialist political groups had become more formalized rather than meaningful for most young people, and in Kyrgyzstan today such groups no longer even exist. Nevertheless, the rhetoric remains that the school and university must undertake a comprehensive program of socializing students both inside and outside of the curricular learning plan. All social organizations in the former USSR were conceptually united in pursuance of a socialist future and were thus formally and informally connected in many ways. The “hidden curriculum” of the West which informally teaches values and morals was not hidden at all in the Soviet Union: it was explicit. Schools were charged with “teaching” both academic subjects (obrazovaniye) and to provide moral upbringing (vospitaniye). They were thus systemically tied not only to the families of students and the youth groups, but also to factories and collective and state farms. Parents were invited and expected to come to the secondary school to assist in extracurricular activities and sometimes compelled to help resolve student behavioral problems. Schools could also turn to factories or to collective or state farms for help meeting their financial or material needs or to have them pressure parents of children who were underachieving or not living up to collectivist expectations. University placements and specializations were tightly coupled since graduates were sent to specific jobs by the ministries which permitted them to enter in the first place. Graduates were assigned to their first jobs by the government to different locations across the USSR. They were legally obligated to stay there for two to three years (otrabotat diplom). Before national independence in the 1990s, the graduation from secondary education was the major event and marker of moving into adulthood. Students in secondary education (until at least the 9th grade), were all together most of the time. The Soviet educational system did not screen students into different tracks as was or still is done in most developed countries of the world. So, the schooling experience was almost universal and actually prolonged “childhood,” since young people had to remain in school and could not officially work. Some students would leave secondary school with only an “incomplete” (nepolnoyoe) secondary education at approximately age 15, having received an attestat after the eighth or ninth grade. Since fifteen year-olds were still not eligible to work, those uninterested in academic instruction often went to the uchilishcha to undertake vocational training and subsequently join

EDUCATION AND SOCIALIZATION • 5

the labor force. Other students who could have stayed for their complete (polnoye) secondary education, but decided they would not be admitted to higher education or decided they wanted to prepare for their future professions sooner, could choose to finish both their final two years of secondary education as well as receive two years of applied or technical training in the teknikumi. In both the uchilishcha and the teknikumi, students were able to receive stipends for study and/or minimal payments for their labors during internships. For some, the transition to adulthood occurred at age 17, just after “complete” secondary education. Then, a small percentage of school graduates went into higher educational institutions—pedagogical institutes to become teachers, technological institutes to become engineers, medical institutes to become doctors, or to the only university in Soviet Kyrgyzstan, which awarded the most prestigious higher education diploma. A larger percentage of students went into secondary professional (specialized) education; teknikumi to become technicians, pedagogical uchilishcha to become elementary teachers, or medical uchilishcha to become nurses. Finally, the majority of school graduates would join the labor force immediately after completing secondary school. Importantly, all boys who graduated from secondary education but did not attend higher education were conscripted for two or three years into the army. There was and remains a tradition in Kyrgyzstan for secondary school leavers to actually stay at home as they enter work or continue post-secondary education. Multiple generation families living together is the norm among Central Asians, as well as for most Russian and other European nationalities. This tradition is partly “cultural” for Kyrgyz as a holdover from nomadic times, but also one of economic necessity for all groups, since housing in the cities was always limited in the Soviet era: families would stand in line for years for government provided apartments. Only (possibly) with marriage would there be the hope of young couples moving out of the family apartment and towards some sort of independence.

BECOMING ADULTS IN TIMES OF SOCIAL TRANSITION Young people in Soviet times thus used to have predictable social institutions which helped to transition them from home to work. These institutions—secondary schools, uchilishcha, technikumi, institutes and the universities—provided specialized or professional training and indoctrination related to the economic and political possibilities of the Soviet state. They connected the values adolescents had learned from their families with the workplace norms young people were destined to join from the 1950s until

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

the 1990s, that is, they provided networks and linkages between the home and the larger world. The transitions could be and were predictable. Very few of the institutional models and practices that used to control the transition to adulthood in Kyrgyzstan for the generations just before independence function today. Young people have no guaranteed job after completing secondary education. The current government also has difficulty controlling internal migration. Young people and families continue to migrate to the cities in search of work regardless of efforts of the national or oblast governments to control where people live. Leaving the security of the family and entering adulthood in modern societies is difficult even under the most stable of situations. But this process can be seriously affected when the family and the economy are in flux or in decline. Both capitalist and socialist economic development models and theories tend to agree that industrialization we saw in the 19th and 20th century called for urbanization and a highly differentiated division of labor. Indeed, industrialization and urbanization dynamics were integrally involved in the transformation of 20th and now 21st century Kyrgyzstan. The ascendance of the Soviet state, meant that men and women would have jobs, income, and housing—even if the social and political indoctrination and institutions they had to endure were a challenge to the traditions of previous generations. For better or worse, few of the above dynamics explain the process of graduation today or where the graduates will go after they finish. Before 1990, there were only a handful of higher education institutions in the country, and they typically enrolled fewer than one in ten graduates. The vast majority of secondary school graduates entered either secondary professional (specialized) training, vocational training, or went directly to work. Many of the 10% going to the university went into scientific and technical programs like engineering, the others into humanities fields. Today, however, skilled and professional labor needs have all but evaporated, primarily due to the collapse of the Soviet command economy. Economic development these days in Kyrgyzstan is mostly in agriculture and extractive industries, and demand for technical skills has been less robust.

EDUCATIONAL TRENDS AND CHANGES IN KYRGYZSTAN Independence from the former USSR led to social, political, and demographic issues that confronted an education system already under siege. With the demise of Soviet power, the rural infrastructure and economy have collapsed, and dramatic population shifts to the cities has occurred. Even as the government has guaranteed free and quality education (and other

EDUCATION AND SOCIALIZATION • 7

social services) to all children, there are no funds with which to build new schools or maintain existing ones (Akayev, 2002; Weidman, et al., 2004). Also, Russian as the primary instructional language in schools—at least in the larger towns and cities—has been challenged by Kyrgyz authorities who want Kyrgyz language to be restored as the primary curricular medium. But there are various issues with elevating the Kyrgyz language to national prominence within the schools, especially in the capital city (Korth, 2005). Here the lingua franca remains Russian, even as half of the Russian population (along with most ethnic Ukrainians and Germans) has left the country for their ancestral homes. And, many of the elite of Kyrgyzstan—both Kyrgyz and other ethnic groups—have broader cosmopolitan interests that require them and their children to be fluent in international languages like Russian. The Kyrgyz teaching model is heavily text-dependent and only now, with the help of external donors,has there been a substantial but still inadequate infusion of textbooks in the national language in some subjects, like history and Kyrgyz language. In most schools, Russian textbooks remain the primary tool of math and science teachers (DeYoung, Reeves, & Valyayeva, 2006). Part of the reason that Kyrgyz leaders today routinely call for creating or restoring a dominant Kyrgyz language stems from national identity concerns. Like most newly independent republics of the former USSR, Kyrgyzstan is focused upon creating national unity and social cohesion (Silova, Johnson, & Heyneman, 2007). Much energy is now being placed upon rediscovering and redefining the national Kyrgyz heroes, as well as venerating Kyrgyz contributions to the Soviet experience. Language policy is part of this effort, even though many non-Kyrgyz claim that Kyrgyz heroes and Kyrgyz language are not part of their traditions. So, national language and national identity issues have continued as hot-button topics in national education reform. During Soviet times, all schools were at least theoretically equal and offered the same curriculum and well-trained teachers. But Kyrgyzstan has suffered the fate of many other transitional countries in the past two decades, and out-migration to the cities where more opportunities lie is the norm. Rural schools have crumbled, and teachers too have often left for better living and professional opportunities in the capital or large urban centers like Osh and Jalalabad. Kyrgyz education law allows schools which can demonstrate superior teaching competence in various subject areas to charge parents for extra instruction. If and when particular schools can convince the education ministry that they have particular faculty strength in one or more subject areas, the ministry allows them to provide this deeper learning (uglublennoye izucheniye). The better secondary schools thus follow logic of recruiting better teachers, petitioning to the education ministry for allowing and subsidizing them to offer improved instruction, and thus

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

reinforcing educational inequality in the country even as the national government proclaims equal education opportunity under the national constitution. Declining public secondary education in Kyrgyzstan is very apparent from both resource and leadership perspectives. For example, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in science found Kyrgyzstan to score dead last among the 57 countries that took the exam in 2006; more than 58% of students scored below the basic skill level (level 1), 28% scored at the basic level (level 1), fewer than 1% scored at level 4, and no one scored in the highest two (5 and 6) levels (OECD, 2007). Schools remain under-funded, and international donor agencies have picked up much of the slack related to teacher training, textbook publishing, infrastructure provision, and demonstrating to school administrators “best practices” in school management (as understood in the West). At the same time, the education ministry resists or is unable to develop objective quality standards for learning. Students can still obtain diplomas even when they received no instruction in required subject areas, such as in many small rural schools. “Grade inflation” is also rampant, since teachers and schools are only rewarded for reporting high achievement to the education ministry. Testing in academic subjects for the most part remains as in Soviet times: it is still primarily a subjective affair, undertaken by teachers who can only lose status by reporting poor student performance. In some subject areas, the best teachers have exited the system for better-paying professions and occupations. Even as school quality declines in Kyrgyzstan, and even though it is just barely government funded, the value placed upon school enrollments remains high throughout the country. One legacy of the Soviet overlay was the high esteem allocated to those who succeeded in secondary education and then continued to acquire academic or professional training in postsecondary institutions. In poorer communities of Kyrgyzstan, parents still send their children to secondary school and hope for the best unless children are needed in the fields or in the bazaar. Parents then hope to be able to send them to the university. A huge problem for all Kyrgyz citizens are the virtual disappearance of social safety nets. Young people without the protection of families and extended families now sometimes enter or are enticed into worlds of drugs and prostitution; others become “hooligans” or join youth gangs (Kuehnast, 1998). Before 1990, there was essentially one national university and several higher education professional institutes to train teachers, doctors, and engineers. As in other former Soviet republics, the national university would be located in the capital city, and other specialized institutes (e.g., pedagogical, technological, medical) would be dispersed strategically both in the capital and in other regional cities. Would-be students then had to calculate

EDUCATION AND SOCIALIZATION • 9

their odds of being able to sit for exams that qualify students for admission to higher education institutions of different prominence and presumed quality. In Kyrgyzstan today, the primary national university retains its name (but has added new institutes underneath its umbrella), while other “institutes” have renamed themselves “universities” or “academies.” There are dozens of new institutions allowed to call themselves “universities,” both private and public, and they all offer curricular specializations approved by the education ministry. At the end of the Soviet period there were nine higher education institutions in Kyrgyzstan, while in 2005 the number had increased to 49 (UNDP, 2005). The number of students in these institutions has increased from 58,800 in 1990 to over 200,000. Full “higher education” specializations increased from 83 to 206 by 2001, plus 87 newly established bachelor degree programs were created. The vast majority of these new specializations are in fields allegedly related to the demand for knowledgeable workers in an emerging private sector economy. Lawyers, business managers, accountants, international relations specialists, etc., are purportedly being trained in higher education institutions now, although it is unclear how competent the instruction can be in such novel (for Kyrgyzstan) specializations. There are few teachers of international relations who have substantial international experience; few teachers of business administration who ever operated a business; and few teachers of law with legal experience in a region where laws are routinely invented or re-defined. All issues of knowledge base competencies in the university are compounded by the fact that university teachers—like secondary school teachers—are often paid below the poverty wage in Kyrgyzstan, and the best and brightest have usually left for work in the private sector. Admission to higher education institutions in Soviet times was restricted. Applicants needed to pass rigorous written and oral university entrance exams administered by the university itself. This admission into the university happened once per year upon secondary school completion. In July or August, would-be students either passed or failed an entrance exam into the particular field a student wanted to study. Once admitted into a specialized course of study (History, Russian Language and Literature, Kyrgyz Language and Literature, etc.) they were assigned to a group to which they belonged for the duration of their studies, typically four or five years. Those who were unsuccessful passing the university entrance examination had to resign themselves to undergoing the process again the following summer; it was not possible for potential students to apply to multiple institutions of higher learning simultaneously. Although the higher education entrance process today approximates that of the Soviet period, a new The National Scholarship Test (NST) is now also in place which was designed to replace the more subjective written

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

and oral exams administered by the growing number of Kyrgyz universities (Drummond &DeYoung, 2004). It is administered by an independent testing group to secondary school graduates who hope to enter national universities as “budget” students in fields deemed important by the government. Yet the demand for higher education remains so high that many universities still admit far greater numbers of tuition paying or “contract” students than the government sponsored “budget” students. Therefore, substantial numbers of students attend university regardless of how well they scored on the NST. The funding of higher education is completely different than it was in Soviet times. Before independence, those admitted to the university studied for free and most also received a living stipend. All costs were absorbed by the Soviet government. As a result of Kyrgyz educational reforms, most universities operate on tuition paid by parents and students themselves. The government subsidy for budget students goes directly to the universities for instruction. They do not cover student living or materials costs. And since the government scholarships are generally much less than what tuition or contract students will pay, the more prestigious universities are increasingly reluctant to accept budget students. COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY In both the spring of 2008 and the spring of 2009, I kept track of higher education news coverage in several media sources as a way to get a handle on national concerns about higher education. Issues related to education, educational politics, and education problems appeared frequently, with university corruption, misdirected priorities, and perceived excessive costs all generating significant media attention. Several topics were particularly well rehearsed. Many national political leaders have gone on record lately complaining that there are too many low-quality universities, which are producing too many specialists with skills that are not needed in the republic. Some argue that the state should get out of the higher education business altogether. Former Secretary of State Nuruulu Dosbol made just such a public argument when he was still in office, in March, 2009. He claimed that “Universities of Kyrgyzstan need to be reformed. They should gradually switch to their own financing. All universities in the republic should be registered and teachers [faculty members] should have relevant diplomas.” (kg.24, March 2009). Deterioration of academic standards in most universities has been recognized by education ministry officials. Assistant Education and Science Minister Boris Kubaev announced at a national conference of university rectors [presidents] in February 2009 that “about 30 percent of Kyrgyz universities do not meet higher education standards” and claimed that ministry “analysis of the institutions’ activity has shown that their teaching staff did not

EDUCATION AND SOCIALIZATION • 11

meet (state) requirements.” He called for the closing or transformation of “such educational establishments” into technical schools or colleges and promised that in 2009 “the ministry will examine [every] university’s correspondence to the licensed requirements.” (kg.24, May 2009). Corruption is a well-recognized national issue for the country in general and for higher education in particular. Kyrgyzstan was ranked 162nd in Transparency International’s 2009 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) on the list of 180 countries, as calculated from surveys of business people and country analysts from international organizations like the World Bank, the Economist, and Freedom House. The country has gotten progressively worse since 2003, when it ranked 118th. (24.kg, Nov. 18, 2009). Then-president of Kyrgyzstan Kurmanbek Bakiyev declared corruption to beKyrgyzstan’s “greatest evil” and expressed concerns that “corruption is still prevalent in the law enforcement and health care systems” (Eurasianet, Jan 21, 2009). Teachers and faculty members are understood to take bribes for grades and assignments, usually attributed to their very low salaries. The situation is so bad, according to a former head of Bishkek’s anti-corruption agency, that she would be scared to go to the hospital because according to her, only five to ten percent of school graduates were actually qualified to practice in the medical fields they were certified in (Eurasianet, Jan. 21, 2009). The government announced (yet another) plan to curb university corruption in March of 2009, whereby commissions comprised of students, parents and the general public would be formed in all higher education institutes (24.kg, March 2009). The reason why universities have been able to partially dodge charges of corruption in the country is due to the political power of their rectors (or presidents). Demand for university entrance remains very strong, and since tuition is the driving force of most institutions, there is little incentive for quality control. Additionally, most universities have been allowed to operate some quasi-private institutes or departments within their supposedly public domains, and their fiscal accountability or transparency measures are weak. Tuition is paid directly to the universities, which the education ministry often claims are not fully reported or documented. Most university rectors appear to live a lavish lifestyle, leading many critics to speculate that universities are run as private fiefdoms. Also, lines of authority in the higher education sector are legally unclear, and rectors are sometimes able to resist edicts and control by the education ministry. This dynamic is illustrated in a news story concerning the rector of the prestigious Kyrgyz State National University (KGNU) who sued the education ministry over an administrative issue in 2008. A district court ruled in favor of the university and ordered the ministry to repay 5,000 soms to the rector for damaging his moral reputation (24.kg, Nov. 2008)! Another theme to be gleaned from media coverage of higher education involves the growing belief that more emphasis needs to be placed

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

upon vocational training as opposed to university instruction. There is an increasing recognition that many new diploma recipients will never work in the specializations they have trained for. Isa Omurkulov, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Education, Science, Culture and Information Policy, outlined his committee’s concerns: With every year, it is becoming more difficult for many graduates from universities to find a job, because there are too many graduates in the same specialties of lawyers, economists and linguists. If we look at the figures for 2008, 75% of them are not working according to their specialty. However, over 90% of the 21,353 graduates from vocational colleges are employed.

In the story entitled “Kyrgyzstan Prepares Young People for Export,” Kyrgyz labor ministry officials were reported as actively encouraging vocational colleges to train young people to seek work both at home and abroad; there was more demand (in 2008) for blue-collar workers in Russia and Kazakhstan than in Kyrgyzstan. Igor Gromov, a senior official from the State Committee for Migration, argued that Kyrgyzstan could no longer cope with providing assistance to its growing number of unemployed. It had to get used to the idea of exporting substantial numbers of its workers to relieve the social and economic burden at home. “The current situation in Kyrgyzstan is characterized by a surplus labor force,” explained Gromov. “In this situation, temporary labor migration is the best alternative, so as to relieve tension in the domestic labor market and give migrants an opportunity to provide for themselves and for their relatives back home.” Yet, university rectors remain opposed to any national plan to de-emphasize higher education; since it might ostensibly diminish the ready supply of new students they have come to now expect (IWPR, Feb. 21, 2008). One way that Kyrgyz universities counter suggestions that their programs are weak or ineffective is to claim that higher education is at the forefront in helping Kyrgyzstan to become integrated into the global economy and society. The education ministries as well as the major (state) universities have signed the Bologna protocol, which calls to for enabling Kyrgyz universities to join European higher education institutional standards. They thus argue that the significance of their teachings and research is internationally recognized and will eventually attract visiting faculty and European students interested in entering their “world level” institutions. The possibility of Kyrgyz state universities being acknowledged as equal partners in the West is considered in Chapter 7. UNIVERSITIES IN THE CAPITAL CITY Most of the universities in Kyrgyzstan today are located in the capital city of Bishkek; some of them are the higher education institutions remaining from Soviet times,like the prominent Kyrgyz State National University

EDUCATION AND SOCIALIZATION • 13

(KGNU) or the State Pedagogical University named after Arabaeva, and some of them are more recently chartered universities like the International University of Kyrgyzstan (IUK). Each of the regional (oblast) centers like Osh, Jalalabad and Naryn have their own higher education institutions, but if possible, young people with family connections or enough money prefer enrolling in a Bishkek university. State universities are theoretically operated or controlled by the national Kyrgyz government. They are considered public since they are at least partially subsidized by the national government, which provides them with space in government-owned buildings and pays some or most of faculty salaries. As mentioned previously, however, most of these state universities target students who pay tuition themselves. Tuition costs for contract students vary depending upon the prestige of the university and their chosen specialization. Some state institutions (like KGNU) may charge $1500 per year for students in their law program, while $400 might do for students preparing to become teachers in the state pedagogical university. Bishkek is also home to “inter-governmental” universities which operate with permission of the Kyrgyz government and a sponsoring country, and whose curricula must meet state standards. All courses of study or “learning plans” for every specialty at every university must be approved by the education ministry. What tends to set the inter-governmental and private universities apart are subsidies by foreign government partners or private sources which equates to better infrastructure and learning materials and higher faculty salaries for instructors. In several cases inter-governmental and private universities also confer internationally recognized diplomas in addition to Kyrgyz ones, and offer grants and scholarships for well-performing students. Among the prominent inter-governmental universities are the Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University (Manas) supported by the Turkish government and the Kyrgyz Russian Slavic University (KRSU)supported by the Russian Federation. Private universities include the International Ataturk Alatoo University (IAAU), which is supported primarily by the local Turkish business community and the Gulen movement; American University of Central Asia (AUCA),co-sponsored by the Soros Foundation and the American government; and the University of Central Asia (UCA), sponsored by the Aga Khan Foundation. SUMMARY Regional media, international donor groups, and my own earlier work with parents, teachers, school administrators, and former teachers suggest that serious deterioration in secondary school quality has occurred in Kyrgyzstan since the mid-1990s. Nevertheless, about half of national secondary school graduates plan to enter a university if their families can pay for it. To accommodate the demand for university entrance, the number of officially

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

recognized universities has mushroomed in the past fifteen years. Only two of the institutions listed above operated as higher education institutions before 1991. The aim of the following study was to find out more about who these new students were and how they negotiated situations and possibilities that it appeared they were ill-prepared to face. As well, it was interested in discovering how the universities that received them could structure learning environments for those who, in an earlier time, would not have been allowed to enter higher education study at all. Survey results presented in Chapter 2 begin to answer some of these questions, and they also suggest additional questions that become the subject of ethnographic investigation.

CHAPTER 2

STUDENTS MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY

Enrollment growth in Kyrgyzstan has been fueled mostly by student and family demand. This chapter investigates who the students are, why they chose to attend university and their choice of a particular university, and what their goals, aspirations, and expectations regarding higher education were. I was also interested in how universities responded to this high demand: I wanted students to give me their impressions on instruction, resources, and other opportunities their universities provided. Therefore I constructed a survey administered at five Kyrgyz universities introduced in Chapter 1—International University of Kyrgyzstan (IUK), Kyrgyz State Pedagogical University (Arabaeva), Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University (KRSU), American University of Central Asia (AUCA), and International Ataturk Alatoo University (IAAU). This chapter is based almost entirely upon results of the survey.

Lost in Transition: Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic pages 15–34 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing 15 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

DEVELOPING AND ADMINISTERING THE SURVEY AND SAMPLING ISSUES The survey was constructed and administered in spring 2008. It was developed from an earlier open-ended pilot survey created in 2007 and given to 40 students at the five Bishkek universities just mentioned. The questions covered a number of topics: why did students choose to come to the university, who was paying for their studies, how well did they feel they were prepared for the university, how much time did they actually spend dedicated to academics, what features did (or did not) they appreciate about their university learning experiences, and how did they foresee the utility of their chosen specialization for future life and careers. Based upon results of the 2007 pilot survey I refined several questions. I also generated several new questions from my experiences as participant observer, and expanded the 2008 survey to include more questions related to university as a cultural and social center. As the number of questions and the potential sample began to grow, I moved to a more of a forced response format (e.g., yes/no, circle the best descriptor, etc.), with opportunities for student comments following some items. There were 38 questions in the final (2008) survey, divided into five clusters. The first involved student demographic or background matters (e.g., rural/urban, born or raised in north/south, gender, nationality, parent’s education and occupation, etc.). The second asked about reasons for attending higher education, why students chose the university they did, which universities were the best in the city in their opinions and why, and why they chose their particular specialization (major) for study. Cluster three asked about if and how students understood the relevance of their university experience to later life; that is, how strongly they believed that their studies would be useful or linked to obtaining later professional employment. Cluster four questions were concerned with how students viewed their secondary school preparation, and also their satisfaction with instruction, equipment, and facilities they found in their current institutions. The final cluster was interested in social and cultural aspects of learning at the university. It asked questions about study habits, group dynamics, relations between students and teachers, etc. This 2008 survey was completed by 204 students from 15 groups at five universities—mostly second and third year students. At four of the five universities respondents studied together in regular groups, while at one university, they were assigned by the university to join special conversational English classes where the survey were administered. I had extensive previous teaching experiences in most of the institutions in which this research took place, and also had developed networks of colleagues and friends among the ranks of teachers and administrators in all five institutions. Na-

STUDENTS MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY • 17

tive English speakers are still in somewhat short supply and highly valued in almost every secondary school and university. From 2001 until 2009 I was a frequent visitor, teacher, and advisor on academic programs in Kyrgyzstan. I was a Fulbright scholar to one of the participating universities in 2001. From 2003–2006, I was the principal investigator of a three year exchange project between my university (the University of Kentucky) and three of the five universities included here. I taught in eleven of the fifteen groups represented in this research. Three other groups which completed the survey were in classes of colleagues who invited me in to collect the data; data from another group was collected by a colleague of mine. All told, there were 13 regular groups who completed the survey, and two groups which were together only for their instructional time with me. Surveys were administered in most cases during instructional periods. Since virtually none of the students had ever participated in a survey of this type, several of the questions also posed as discussion topics in my classes. I was somewhat surprised that most surveys were completed in Russian, rather than in English, although both versions were available. Students in all the groups who participated in the survey studied English in their secondary schools (from fifth or even first grade), and they continue to study it as a major at the university. In Bishkek especially, the interest in learning English at the university level is important since many students hope to find work with one of the many international organizations which work in the country. Participation in the survey was voluntary, yet virtually every student completed it. Survey questions (English version) are reprinted in Appendix A. Students involved in this survey were in humanities-oriented fields where English was a primary language of instruction. These fields or specializations included International Journalism, American Studies, English Translation, International Relations, and English and Information Technologies. Many other internationally oriented curricular specializations are populated by students studying English in addition to those who plan to teach a foreign language or become a translator or interpreter. Approximately two-thirds of students studied at state (public) universities (46% at IUK and 21% at Arabaev), and one-third at intergovernmental and private universities (15% at AUCA, 10% at IAAU, and 8% at KRSU). As these numbers suggest, my survey was technically a convenience sample rather than random or stratified by university or specialization type. Results that follow thus reflect both students’ interests and experiences and a bias toward those studying in internationally focused humanitarian professional fields. As analysis will show however, sample characteristics in my study approximate national demographic categories of Kyrgyz young people, and answers to most ques-

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

tions triangulate well with other data sources on issues and concerns about higher education throughout the country. So the “bias” of the survey and the research in general is that it taps into a pro-international and western oriented study sample of the larger population. But, Kyrgyzstan in general has until recently been focused on internationalism and the West. I believe therefore that even a small sample of 204 students—many of whom are from rural backgrounds and are from all over the country—provides a fairly representative look at the situation of higher education in the country.

STUDENT DEMOGRAPHICS The primary purpose of this survey was to establish a baseline for the following ethnographic case study. I briefly summarize in this chapter main survey results. The first part of the survey asks about the backgrounds of participating students. Question #1 was concerned with the age of students. Eighty-five percent (85%) of the survey respondents entered university directly after secondary school, meaning that they were either 17 or 18 years old. AUCA students were slightly older as a group than students attending other institutions. The significant fact is that almost all regularly attending Kyrgyzstani students (studenti ochnogo otdeleniya) enter the university at age 18 and finish their studies at age 22 or 23. In America, they would be considered “traditional” students—entering university right after secondary school and attending full time. When we try to portray a “traditional” full-time student in a Kyrgyz university however, one important fact stands out: most students rarely live independently on or near a university campus. Typical Kyrgyz universities—particularly state universities—are not designed as settings for enabling independence and broader living experiences. About two-thirds of the students in this sample lived with their family: 37% with parents; 28% with other relatives (Question #11). Only one-third had some sort of independent living experience: 9% lived in a dormitory, 17% rented an apartment with a roommate, and 6% lived by themselves. Students attending the private AUCA and IAAU had different patterns than those attending state universities, since they both recruited students from outside Bishkek and even outside of Kyrgyzstan. Both of these universities either provided dormitories or sponsored apartment living. Question #2 focused upon how the rural-urban split of the country (65% rural versus 35% urban) was reflected within the survey sample. My sample of 204 students approximated the national picture, with 33% reporting they graduated from schools in the capital city of Bishkek, another 27%

STUDENTS MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY • 19

from schools in oblast or small cities and raion centers, and 29% from village schools. Most of the students who graduated from Bishkek schools lived with their parents, and most of those reporting demographic origins outside of the city lived with uncles, aunts, older brothers or sisters, etc. Worth noting then is that for many (but not all) Kyrgyz university students, attending university was similar to attending secondary school: they still lived at home, took a bus to their studies, and returned home in the evening (particularly the young women). For those 29% or so of students coming to the university from the village, the university “campus” was in fact a more multicultural and cosmopolitan experience than they would have had before. In addition to a rural-urban dimension in Kyrgyzstan, there is also an important cultural north-south split. The country has higher education institutions in both regions, but since Bishkek (in the north) is the national capital and largest city, I was not surprised that the survey found many students from both regions. Among my student sample, 58% reported coming from the north, 29% from the south, and most of the rest were international (see Question #3). The vast majority of students who completed the survey were ethnically Kyrgyz (65%). Ethnic Russians accounted for 14%, while other regional minorities (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Tatars, Turkmen, and Afghans) numbered about 2% each (Question #5). The percentages of Kyrgyz and Russian participants approximate percentages of Kyrgyz and Russians in the national population. However, there were interesting differences among the universities in terms of ethnicity. Almost all Arabayeva students and two-thirds of IUK students were ethnic Kyrgyz, while students in Slavonic and AUCA were almost equally split between ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Russians. There were no Russian students at IAAU, but many students came from other Central Asian republics, as well as from Afghanistan and Turkey. Most university instruction, at least in Bishkek, used to be given in Russian, but since independence more and more has been in Kyrgyz. However, not every student who undertook instruction in Kyrgyz in secondary school is necessarily in a university cohort where Kyrgyz is the language of instruction; some of them are in Russian language cohorts. I was interested in this as a possible complicating factor for student academic life. For 47% of the students who participated in the survey, Russian was the language of instruction in their secondary schools, and for 39%, Kyrgyz was the instructional language (Question # 4). All Slavonic students and most at AUCA reported their instruction had been in Russian. IUK students were about evenly split between Russian and Kyrgyz, while about two-thirds of Arabaeva students had studied in Kyrgyz. A more mixed picture emerged from IAAU, where international students had been a larger component. Other languages of secondary school within the sample included those from neighboring CA

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

republics (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan). There were also a few students who graduated from secondary school where either English or Turkish was the instructional languages. Gender and higher education participation in Kyrgyzstan has been an international focus since the 1990s. In my sample, 78% (159) students were women, and 22% (45) were men (Question #6). In general, women outnumber men in higher education—a split which is actually representative of national statistics where women are overrepresented, especially in Humanities and Education specializations (ADB, 2005). Since the government is only minimally involved in funding higher education, I was interested in who was paying student tuition (Question #7). Among the sample of 204 students, 65% reported that their parents were paying; 8% that their parents combined efforts with other relatives. About 15% of students reported being “budget” students (mostly at Arabaev, which is still involved formally with teacher training), and 3% attended on some sort of scholarship. Only 4% of students reported that they themselves were paying university tuition. I also asked students if they had loans or grants to study, but no one in my sample reported having borrowed money to attend. This proved to be an important theme later in this research, where very few first and second year students even in Bishkek are working or want to work. But this all begins to change by a student’s third and fourth year. Results of from questions 7 and 11 underscore again how central family—including extended family—is to being a university student. In addition to contributing to student tuition, relatives also provide living spaces in their homes (Question #11). If we combine the two categories—parents and relatives—they provided tuition for over 76% of the students. Higher education in Kyrgyzstan thus seems to be at least as much a family affair as it is an individual opportunity. Interested in the educational backgrounds of parents fully supporting their children’s university attendance, I asked about fathers’ and mothers’ education levels (Questions #9 and #10) and their occupations (Question #8). Results indicated that most students in my sample came from welleducated families. Fifty-two percent (52%) reported that their fathers had a higher education, 20% secondary specialized (teknikumi) education, and 28% a secondary education. Students further reported that their mothers had even higher educational achievements: 59% had higher education diplomas, 23% special secondary diplomas, and only 15% completed just secondary education. By combining and analyzing responses to the educational attainment questions the survey indicated that about 40% of students in the sample came from households where both parents had higher education, and another 30% of students had at least one parent with a higher education diploma. This means that 70% of students came from households where at

STUDENTS MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY • 21

least one parent had graduated from the university or other higher education institution. On the other hand, only 16 students had both parents with secondary education only. All 16 of these students studied at one of the state universities, IUK and Arabaeva, while none of the students in more costly private or inter-governmental institutions came from households without at least one parent being a university graduate. Most of the students whose parents had no higher education in their backgrounds came originally from rural areas of the country. Thus, there was some stratification by class and region within the student bodies of the universities sampled. High levels of education, though, have not always insulated the parents of my students from forces of the transition to a new market economy. This transition has brought about discrepancies between their educational levels and current occupations. Students were given the option of providing their own categories when asked to describe their parents’ current occupational status or profession. Their answers were revealing but hard to quantify. The mothers of 38 students were teachers and of nine were medical doctors. Meanwhile 45 mothers were ether homemakers or not currently employed, and six were pensioners. The mothers of 24 students were reported to be economists, accountants or involved in business, but without specification on business type. Mothers of 19 students were reported to be sales clerks, seamstresses, or working in the service sector, and 15 students did not answer this question. Forty-five students answered that their fathers were engineers, economists, accountants, businessmen, or doctors. Eight students said their fathers were pensioners; seven unemployed; 19 were laborers or selling in the market; and another 19 were “drivers,” which in the Kyrgyz case often means self-employed taxi operators. There were also a few responses hard to interpret and several students who did not answer the question. Households where no one was working or both parents were pensioners totaled 17. The data suggests that while some student families yet had working professionals in the household, many came from families where one or both parents was underemployed or underemployed in 2008.

REASONS FOR GOING TO THE UNIVERSITY One original aim of my research involved investigating why the demand is so high for university entrance, considering national economic decline and escalating college costs. Why did students and their parents so desire university studies? I asked such questions in the earlier open-ended pilot survey from 2007. The two most common answers to this question were: “to get a higher education,” and “to get good knowledge.” Although I applauded both sorts of responses: i.e., that attending the university was an end unto

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

itself and that at the university there were many important things to learn, I suspected these answers were more rhetorical than carefully thought out. Rarely was there in the survey answer to this question or several others any clear articulations of what students considered knowledge to be comprised of, or why they thought the university was a place to find it. In the 2008 survey, I constructed two interrelated and intentionally overlapping questions: “What is the most important reason to go to the university” (Question #20, forced response); and “What do you need higher education for?” (Question #24, open ended). Five answers to Question #20, all derived from the 2007 pilot survey, were possible: to receive good knowledge, to help me find a good job later, to make my parents proud of me, to be able to visit with friends, to be able to live in Bishkek. Respondents were asked to rank these five in order of significance. The first three of these proved to be the most popular, with “the ability to visit with friends,” and “to be able to live in Bishkek” ranking far down on the list. Visiting with friends is actually quite important in the Kyrgyz university context, which is discussed in the next chapter. But, students in the survey did not articulate this as a compelling factor in choosing their university. The ability to use university attendance as a mechanism to come to the city was also probably ranked low since as I found out later, most of my sample students were already living in Bishkek, either because they were originally from there or because their parents had migrated to the capital several years previously. The most frequently given answer on question #20 was “to get good knowledge”—166 out of 197 students ranked this first, and 21 second. Among this sample of students, the conviction is that there is a knowledge base that is worth knowing and that the university is the place where they “give” it to you. To my surprise, “to help me find a good job later” came in second: 118 students ranked it second, 31 students third, and only 34 indicated this was their most important reason for going to the university. Students thus did seem to understand that there was or should be some direct connection between their studies and their careers. The third most frequent choice for going to the university was “to make my parents proud of me,” with 95 third choice responses; 26 second, and 11 first. Question #24 was open-ended and asked “What do you need higher education for?” As in the pilot survey, about a dozen superficial responses or slogans were listed (e.g., “good knowledge equals good life”). Beyond these, though, several noteworthy themes emerged in the narrative responses; obtaining a good job or career was one of them, with about 120 students stating this objective. Many of these 120 students also linked higher education to high status or professional careers. For example, one student said he needed higher education “in order to become a good specialist and to work in good company;” while another argued higher education was required

STUDENTS MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY • 23

even for minimal employment, “in order not to be unemployed like my parents.” A student from KRSU suggested that like most other countries, “mental labor is valued more than physical labor.” Noticeable by their absence were references to particular skills that might be learned at university. Students—at least first and second year students—seemed to have great faith in the power of the university to confer general knowledge and even specialized knowledge for some sort of employment. But beyond choosing a field of study, most students had little understanding about what the components of their studies were, what particular skills they should seek to acquire, or that it would be up to them to actively engage the university to provide information and/or skills outside of classes. Higher education for most students was to be received at the feet of instructors, and a diploma would naturally follow—necessary (but not sufficient) to gain employment. That a higher education was a more of a commodity and not a set of skills to be learned was suggested by one student who argued: “I think every person should have at least one or maybe two higher educations; I want to get a second higher education.” The narrative answers to Question #24 repeated a theme found in the earlier pilot study: That becoming a well-educated person via higher education was an important goal in and of itself. One student opined that “without higher education I feel I would be robbed of part of an interesting life and a lot of useful information.” Because virtually every Kyrgyz citizen graduated from secondary schools in Soviet times (and most still do today), the threshold between being an educated or non-educated person seems to mandate acquiring some kind of higher education diploma. “And who wants to be illiterate?” rhetorically exclaimed one respondent. Since Perestroika, the language of educators in Kyrgyzstan as well as in other former Soviet republics has included the discourse of individuality and self-realization, another theme within responses to Question #24. Perhaps a dozen students in the sample specifically used the words “self-realization;” others talked about how higher education impacted developing their individuality. One AUCA student argued that higher education would help her “realize myself as a person in my life and not become ordinary;” and an IUK student needed it “for my development and for the achievement of plans and wishes set up by me and for me.” One student combined most of the previously mentioned responses, stating that higher education was necessary “in order to provide for my future, to make my way in the world, and to become somebody.” Higher education as a defense against poverty, as a shield from having to return to the village, or as a means to being able to live independently were other topics discussed. More than a dozen students considered that a “normal” or “decent” life was only possible if one had a higher education. This thought was highly connected to the interest of “being independent,”

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

reported by approximately 10% of the students. For at least some of the young women in the sample, a higher education was seen as a way to attain or retain gender equality. One student indicated a higher education would enable her to “provide for my own future (so that) I would not to have to stay at home and be a housewife all my life.” Another theme linked to the need for higher education involved providing for family and extended family, not only for one’s self. Earnings from a “normal,” “good,” or “well-paid” position could be applied toward “my future family,” “my parents,” “my parents in old age,” etc. Contributing to society and the motherland were also frequently mentioned. An Arabaev student believed that “contributing to the well-being of society and to improving social life” would be possible due to his higher education. Another argued his higher education was important in that he could be “useful for society” and contribute to the development of his motherland, since “Kyrgyzstan needs good specialists.” One announced that he needed higher education to be “a patriot of my country.” Another suggested that higher education would help her “work for the benefit of the state and to help it blossom;” necessary she believed because this would enable her nation to “enter the developed countries so that everybody would know about Kyrgyzstan.” A patriotic reason for university study was also reported by some students who wanted to travel abroad and then return to Kyrgyzstan with new competencies to contribute to society. However, not all students seemed to believe that their futures lay in Kyrgyzstan and/or helping their motherland improve. A few claimed that things in the country were bad and hoped to use international higher education specialization to emigrate: “Our Kyrgyzstan moves more and more backward every day, and I think that here we have no future, (since we) have ongoing inflation in our country. I would love to move abroad and find a decent job,” said one. And another: “One needs to leave this place, and that is what I will do with God’s help in the nearest future.”

CULTURAL ISSUES INVOLVED IN THE UNIVERSITY Two culturally specific issues were addressed in the questions: military conscription (Question #17) and bride kidnapping (Question #18). Military conscription was universal in Kyrgyzstan and all boys had to perform military service. Most university students, however, can undergo military training as part of their studies and then become officers in the army reserve. This factor had only modest explanatory power in the survey, as only 6 of the 45 boys (13%) answered that avoiding military conscription was a major reason they had entered the university.

STUDENTS MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY • 25

Even more specific to the Kyrgyz context is the fact that bride kidnapping is on the rise, particularly in rural areas. It was possible that young women might enroll in the university in order to leave their more remote villages and potentially escape involuntary kidnapping. Nine (6%) of the 159 young women in this sample indicated that avoiding this fate was an important factor for them enrolling in Bishkek universities. Almost all of the positive responses to this case were to be seen from rural students who studied at Arabaev and IUK. It is quite possible that this percentage underreports the issue, as many rural parents fearing this fate for their daughters brought their entire families to Bishkek as part of the ongoing general migration in the country.

REASONS FOR CHOOSING OR ENTERING PARTICULAR UNIVERSITIES There are many potential students trying to enter Kyrgyz universities, and there are many places which call themselves universities that may or may not live up to their names. By international standards, there are few objective criteria for determining program quality available to prospective students and parents, and no nationally available official rankings of university programs. Yet there do seem to be reputational differences within and between the state universities (e.g., Krgyz State National University, Arabaev, and International University of Kyrgyzstan); inter-governmental institutions (e.g., Turkish-Manas University and Kyrgyz Russian-Slavonic University); and the private ones (American University of Central Asia and International Ataturk Alatoo University). Most students appear to have strong opinions about differences among Bishkek universities, at least by their second year of study. Question #19 asked: “Please explain why you chose this university and specialization to study in.” There were a variety of individual answers, as well as some patterned differences by institution. International University of Kyrgyzstan (IUK) students typically responded that their university choice was the result of interest in learning foreign languages. About 20% proclaimed that studying English had been their “childhood dream.” Another 20% thought that attending this institution would help them travel overseas upon their study’s completion, as at IUK they could “work with foreigners,” which would be a step to working abroad later. Several students suggested that the name of the university itself was enough to lead them to the door. One student believed that “even its name ‘International’ [means] its diploma is recognized all over the world.” As it happens, of course, this is not really true—but how would they or their parents have known?

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

A frequently mentioned reason for entering this university was the comparatively low cost (approximately $450 per year), like the student who said: “This university charges not too much, not too little for higher education;” and another who complained that her favorite university was “beyond my means” (ne po karmanu). Others came to IUK after failing to qualify for more prestigious universities. Rather than sit out a year to try to re-enter their first-choice institution, they entered IUK instead—as one of them explained: “English is needed everywhere now, and as a last resort we can [always] work as a teacher.” Some students found themselves here not of their own volition, like one who wanted to become a veterinarian: “I like animals very much; but my father did not agree with this and insisted that I enter here.” Arabaeva University is the other state university whose students were surveyed in this research, and which also has no formal international sponsorship or financial underwriting. Most students at Arabaev pay tuition, although many, including a portion of our sample, were budget students (those on government scholarship). During the Soviet times, all students at this institution—when it was the Women’s Pedagogical Institute—were being trained to become teachers. In addition to a long history of preparing teachers of English (among other subjects), it now also prepares translators and interpreters in response alledgedly to market forces. The new specializations are often offered within newly established private or semi-private institutes. When asked why they had come to Arabaeva, about half of the students in the sample said that they wanted to become translators, and that this was the place to train for such a career. Several more added that the university had a good reputation in teaching English, and also because at this university they could enter an English program as budget students. Eleven of the 43 Arabaeva students gave no reply to why they chose this particular university and specialization. There were several sorts of responses from the sub-sample of students attending Kyrgyz Russian Slavonic University (KRSU) as to why they entered there. That this institution was “prestigious” was noted in six of sixteen answers; that it gives “good knowledge” in four others; and that obtaining both Kyrgyz and Russian recognized diplomas in two more. The themes of prestige, accompanied by beliefs that their institution was the best in the country, were seen even more in responses to the university choice question at AUCA. Worth noting is that AUCA does not offer specializations that either focus on language or concentrate on teacher education, even though majors in American Studies or Anthropology could lead to positions as interpreters or translators. English language competence on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is an entrance prerequisite here, not a curricular specialization. As detailed later, AUCA claims to be developing national leaders in such areas as politics, economics, and social sciences.

STUDENTS MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY • 27

Many students in the sample echoed the university claims to excellence. The idea of university prestige only hinted at in the state universities of IUK and Arabaeva increased at KRSU, and became more typical at AUCA. Three dominant responses emerged from AUCA: students related to its national or regional prestige, to high educational quality, and to their university degree leading to a good job. Typical proclamations related to prestige were that AUCA was “the best university not only in Kyrgyzstan but throughout Central Asia,” and it “[had] the highest quality in Kyrgyzstan.” With regard to the belief that university study at AUCA had actual career utility, one student answered “this university will give me many opportunities for my future career, [since] my specialty [American Studies] will allow me to be employed easily as an interpreter, instructor, or other position in an international organization.” Another reason several students claimed to have entered AUCA was that its diploma was recognized in both the US and Kyrgyzstan, and that the credit system used at AUCA was more desirable than the former Soviet system. This was only partially true, since not every AUCA major is recognized by US accrediting bodies. Several more students noted that they had scholarships to this university and thus paid no tuition. And a final argument heard in some answers was that unlike national universities in Kyrgyzstan, there was no corruption at AUCA. A primary reason for going to International Ataturk Alatoo University (IAAU), according to student responses, was also lack of corruption. Since none of the respondents at other universities mentioned corruption as a factor, either they perceived none at their universities, or perhaps such practices had become so common that they were considered normal. Ataturk University students also noted that their university taught in four languages (Kyrgyz, English, Russian, and Turkish), and that having most lessons in English was a plus. One student proclaimed that “our university is the best and the strongest in Bishkek. I am confident about that because there is no corruption or bribes in our university and highly qualified instructors teach here. Quality of education is the most important [reason]; therefore I entered this university.”

RANKING UNIVERSITIES Most students seem to have working knowledge about their own university’s strengths and weaknesses, and anecdotally confided views about others in the city. Question # 23 attempted to find out about university preferences within the sample, asking students to rank the three universities in Bishkek they would choose were money no object. They were also asked to explain their choices in an open-ended format. Not every student gave three choices, and not every student explained their choices. The clear “winners”

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

of the rankings were two universities: AUCA (private) and KRSU (intergovernmental). AUCA was first choice of 105 students, and second or third choice of another 38. KRSU was first choice of 29 students, and second and third choice of 62. These data cannot be explained by the unequal sample sizes of students from different universities: only 31 of the students in the sample came from AUCA, and just 16 from Slavonic (KRSU). The rankings seem connected to the earlier answers given regarding university prestige as a reason to enter. At the bottom of the rankings (places five, six, and seven) were three state universities: Kyrgyz State National University, Arabaeva University, and Bishkek Humanities University. In between were the inter-governmental Turkish-Manas University and the private Turkish Ataturk-Alatoo University. These results are partly explained by uneven representation in the sample from the various universities, but also due to the perceived strength of foreign language instruction for most student groups in the study. The majority of students stated in the open-ended questions that English was taught best at AUCA and at the Turkish universities. Both of them strived to teach to international standards, and had more many native English speakers on their staffs.

SKILLS, CAREER, AND THE UNIVERSITY Question #25 on the survey sought to have students specify “what specific skills (umeniya i navyki) are you learning at the university to help you in your career?” This was an open-ended item designed to stimulate thoughts about how what was being learned might have direct applications to the world of work. Many students had either not seriously considered such possibilities, or did not want to discuss them: 50 did not even answer the question. Forty-four of the non-respondents were from the state universities (IUK and Arabaev), while only six came from the inter-governmental or private institutions (AUCA, KRSU, and IAAU). The specificity of answers given also diverged between the three university types. Among those who answered the question, IUK and Arabaev university respondents often listed either “good knowledge” as a skill they were acquiring, or “language;” “English;” or “computer skills.” One said “I do not even know,” while others seemed unsure what was being asked for. A few thought that the ability to communicate with foreigners was a skill to be acquired, and several were rather caustic, saying “time will show,” or “at our university, none.” Answers from students at the inter-governmental and private universities used fuller descriptions. One Slavonic student argued that “analyzing situations with creativity as well as acquiring classroom management skills” were

STUDENTS MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY • 29

important. To be fair, the KRSU students in the sample were studying international relations, so many indicated that communication skills related to understanding international economies and information systems were important. AUCA students were able to use the “s” word (skills) more fluently. They talked of acquiring “critical thinking,” computer programming, presentation, business, independence, and time management skills—in addition to the language skills mentioned sometimes by students from the state universities. Ataturk students mentioned skills related to multiple language acquisition, problems of international relations, and computer competencies. I asked several questions regarding if and how university study was perceived relevant to future occupations. Eighty-seven (87%) indicated that they did indeed intend to find work commensurate with their academic specialization (Question #32). Most students realized, however, that they were going to have to find work on their own and that the university would only have limited involvement in this process (Question #33). Sixty percent agreed finding a job would mostly be up to them, while 17% had not even thought about this yet. Ten percent expected relatives to help, and only 7% expected the university to be involved. Breaking down the responses by university, about 20% of IUK students thought their parents would end up helping them find a job—a greater percentage than students in the other universities. AUCA students thought they could find a job on their own, since they believed their degrees would be prestigious enough to attract employers’ attention. IAAU students in the sample were almost evenly split into three groups: those who said “I have not thought about this,” versus “myself,” versus “the university will help me.” The idea that their university would help them find work at IAAU was far more pronounced than at the other institutions. I learned subsequently that Atuturk intentionally sends many students abroad for internships during their study, and networks students upon graduation to local and regional Turkish businesses which are the primary underwriters of this private university.

WHERE STUDENTS PLANNED OR HOPED TO TRAVEL OR WORK International possibilities for travel or work were clearly reflected in responses to Question #34, which inquired if students had such hopes for their futures. An amazing 92% agreed that this was their aim, and only 5% admitted that they had no international travel plans. Where students would want to work within Kyrgyzstan revealed that they are ready to leave the capital city. Asked if they would (Question #37) work outside of the

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

capital (Bishkek) if they found a job, 75% said they would, but almost 20% said they would not. The others indicated “maybe,” depending upon the particular job or location. Changing the question to focus on job type rather than location resulted in interesting answers, especially with regard to a teaching position. Since foreign languages are in huge demand at all secondary and higher education levels, almost all graduates from universities in Kyrgyzstan could teach either in schools or universities. Most of the students in this sample are studying in specializations specifically focused upon teaching. However, only 28% of the students (Question # 35) agreed that they would teach in secondary school, while 64 % said they would not. Even 40% of the Arabeav students in the sample—all studying in fields preparing them to be teachers—indicated they did not want to teach as a career. It might be surmised that graduates would prefer to teach in the university upon graduation, but even here the low salary and low status of today’s university faculty appears to dissuade many from wanting to join. Only 53% said they would take a teaching job at the university, and 41% just said “no.” Since university teachers were held in such high regard during Soviet times, this lack of interest in becoming a university faculty member is alarming and one of the largest developing problems in higher education today.

VIEWS ON SECONDARY SCHOOL PREPARATION Part of this research was to investigate if and how problems of secondary education might have an impact on how well prepared university students felt to undertake their university program. The testimonials by school directors and teachers regarding the absence of basic instruction in some sciences and language subjects are pervasive, as are acknowledgements that school textbooks and other resources are often insufficient or non-existent (DeYoung, Reeves, & Valyayeva, 2006). Answering Question #12, most students reported that their secondary school education was strong enough to enter the university; however, 22% indicated it was not adequate, and responses differed significantly by university. Only one of the 20 students at Ataturk University replied that their secondary school had been inadequate. This seems due to the fact that most of the Ataturk students came to their university directly from Turkish-supported secondary schools rather than national public schools. This question was likely less relevant also at AUCA where many students were international or had attended elite Bishkek secondary schools. Since much if not most instruction in Bishkek universities require fluency in Russian, Question #13 requested student opinions about their Russian language competency. Across the sample, 77% replied that they felt fluent

STUDENTS MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY • 31

enough in Russian to master their studies. Virtually all the students at both Slavonic and AUCA indicated that they were fluent in Russian (save for several international students) while percentages were a bit lower for the other institutions. However, it is unknown how important this issue was for all students, since some of the sample groups from Arabaev and IUK were organized into Kyrgyz language instructional groups, and multiple languages were informally used in some instruction at several of the universities. Every student and student group involved with this study also reported that they had undertaken many years of English as part of their secondary education. However, about half of the students (49%) reported their English preparation in secondary schools was insufficient for what they were facing now in the university (Question #14). Results here were similar: lower percentages of students at both Ataturk and AUCA reported problems with their English language fluency compared to the other institutions. It was thus interesting but not surprising that 28% reported undertaking extra English instruction outside of the university in order to be successful (Question #15). AUCA was an outlier, where just one student reported being tutored in English independently. Question #27 asked “how difficult is it for you to study at the university?” Only 29% indicated they were having problems or serious problems with their work, while 61% claimed university courses were “not so hard,” and 7% agreed they had it “very easy” in the university. About half of the students at AUCA and IAAU universities claimed their studies were difficult, while at the other three universities, fewer than 25% of the students so reported.

STUDENT SATISFACTION WITH THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT In the years of my teaching in Kyrgyzstan I have noted that the material conditions of many university buildings seemed inadequate, and frequently the resources for teaching—even blackboard condition, chalk, and taperecorders—are poor. At the same time, the universities invariably advertise that they have complete computer labs available to students. I wondered if the bulk of students perceived these resources as marginal as I did, so such questions were asked in the survey. The majority of the students (61%) were dissatisfied with their university buildings and classrooms, especially in the state universities (Question # 21). Most of the students at IUK were unhappy with their facilities; AUCA students and those at Arabaev were more evenly split. The only exception was at IAAU, where all students seemed pleased with their learning environments. This was not surprising given that they studied in a new building created expressly for this undertaking,

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

while the other institutions all used buildings previously occupied by other enterprises. Almost the same percentage (63%) were disappointed with the quality of computer resources that either their university had or they were allowed to use, but again, this differed by institution. AUCA and IAAU students were by and large satisfied with their computer resources, while more than twothirds of students at the three other universities complained about them.

CLASSES, TIME AND MONEY It is widely acknowledged—even by the government—that higher education in Kyrgyzstan is rife with corruption. I therefore asked in Question #26, if the students knew anyone who had to pay a bribe in order to obtain a good mark. This was obviously a sensitive question, yet only eight students did not answer. To my surprise, 148 answered “no,” while 48 agreed that they did know someone within their group who at one time or another paid a bribe. Results varied by university: 16 of 42 (38%) Arabaev students and 19 of 90 (21%) IUK students answered “yes.” Meanwhile, the intergovernmental KRSU had the highest reported corruption score: 13 of 14 students there agreed bribes were being paid at their institution. Meanwhile, none of the AUCA students and only one from IAAU answered “yes” to this question. These results suggest that at some universities corruption seems almost normal, while at others, it is a non-factor. Most students in Bishkek travel to their universities via marshrutka since they live in other parts of the city. I wondered how long it took for them to come to the university (Question #28). For more than half of the students it was less than a thirty minute trip, for another quarter it ran between 30 and 60 minutes, and for 22 students, approximately 10%, the travel time was over an hour. Results varied a bit by university—none of the Arabaev and AUCA students traveled more than an hour. Another potentially interesting question about the culture of learning among these universities involves study time outside of classes: does the university require and enable serious independent study after the teaching day? There was a wide spread in the answers to this question (#29): 29% of the sample reported studying less than three hours per week outside of class; 36% between 3 and 5 hours; 28% between 5 and 10 hours; and 13% more than 10 hours. IUK and Arabaev students typically admitted studying less than five hours per week, while IAAU and AUCA students logged more than that. The AUCA response is likely partly explained by the fact that their institution followed a western credit system, requiring fewer daily instructional hours with expectation of significant independent work.

STUDENTS MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY • 33

Time spent on social activities was another interest of the survey, and Question #30 asked about time spent with friends outside of classes. As it turned out, students reported less time here than I anticipated: 57% fewer than five hours per week, 18% between 5 and 10 hours, and only 9% more than 10 hours. I interpret these data to be an artifact of the group system in place in most of the universities. That is, most students are with their friends all day during their classes; and many (especially girls) return home immediately after their studies to family responsibilities (see Chapter 3). They do not have time to visit with friends other than during the school day. This seems greatly corroborated by responses to Question # 31, which asked “how well do you and your group mates get along together.” That group mates were all good friends was agreed to by 86%, and only 9% of students said that they “often quarreled.” Students at IUK and Slavonic reported slightly more quarrelsome groups than the other universities.

SUMMARY Survey results discussed in this chapter revealed some educational trends worth considering on their own, and also serve as entry points for the case study ahead. Demographics of participants mirrored the nation as a whole. Students surveyed were mostly 18 and 19 years old, they were from both the village and the city and were predominantly Kyrgyz. Women outnumbered men, as the specializations they were studying for were mostly in foreign languages and humanities with an international focus. Most of the students had one or both parents who had received some higher education during Soviet times, even though many of these parents were now either retired or underemployed. Reasons for entering the university were similar, and often typically unfocused, but this differed by university. To get or receive “good knowledge” was a favorite reason given for enrolling in the university; yet the exact content of this knowledge was not well articulated. Students in the more selective and costly inter-governmental and private universities seemed better able to specify what skills they wanted and hoped to acquire in university. They reported more time spent studying outside of class. Tentative hypotheses of mine that avoiding conscription as enlisted men (for boys) and avoiding being kidnapped (for girls) might be reasons some students enter university were only marginally supported. It might be that such concerns were more parents’ than those of the girls and boys surveyed. Sending children to the university would end up being part of the larger appeal of moving to Bishkek for many families who value more cosmopolitan possibilities for their children (as for themselves). Declining conditions in the countryside coupled with the new freedom parents feel they have

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translates to the dramatic rural to urban migration happening here. And as the survey suggests, parents played a heavy decision making role in the university entrance process for almost all students. Student perceptions on the inadequacy of their secondary education preparedness for higher education revealed what I anticipated. General preparation and Russian language preparation in secondary school were reported by about 20% of the total group as insufficient to study in university; and in English preparation this statistic was even higher. I suspect even poorer preparation in math and science would have been cited had such questions been asked, since these are the fields lacking teachers the most. But the overall problems revealed by students need to be qualified by university type: very few of those in the private and more competitive Ataturk and AUCA universities claimed they were not ready for university. By the second year of university study, most students had developed some sense of university quality and/or prestige. The private and inter-governmental universities (AUCA, Turkish Manas, and Slavonic) were all considered first rate. Students viewed the institutions that were internationally sponsored and had foreign language native speakers as the best institutions to study in had they the resources to attend them. Students of the state universities were more often critical of the instructional resources they found at their universities, be these computer equipment, desks or classroom spaces. None of this is too surprising, since the private and inter-governmental universities could in truth proclaim that as a result of international sponsorship, they had better buildings and equipment. Students in the non-state universities also reported less bribery within their institutions than did the students in state universities, although fewer students than I suspected argued that they themselves had witnessed actual corruption. In the end, Kyrgyz university students of the early 21st century appear to be similar and different to many around the world. Chapter 2 considered these similarities and differences utilizing a survey; the next two chapters look at what it means to be a student ethnographically at one particular Bishkek university.

CHAPTER 3

ON BEING A STUDENT AT BISHKEK NEW UNIVERSITY SOCIAL SCENES AND SITUATIONS

Survey data presented in the previous chapter came from 204 students in 15 groups in five universities—two state, one intergovernmental (with substantial support from Russia), and two private (with substantial support from the USA and Turkey). The next two chapters constitute a case study where I attempt to clarify and expand upon many of the answers given in the survey by considering student biographies and how they relate to and were part of the various cultural settings and scenes found in one Kyrgyz university. In this case study, a variety of ethnographic research strategies, including site description and analysis, participant observation, ethnographic interviews, document collection, and oral histories are utilized to describe in greater depth this particular site and what occurred there (Merriam, 1998; Spradley, 1980). This case study extended from February 2007 until May 2009. Fieldwork portions of this work typically occurred in one to three month segments of each spring semester. Interviews and participant observation were also accomplished in several off-campus sites, and included former inLost in Transition: Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic pages 35–59 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing 35 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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structors and administrators familiar with this institution and its curricular specializations. Ethnographic accounts are an attempt to picture and sympathetically portray the life worlds and experiences of a culture or subculture in terms of both behavior and values, by paying particular attention to how those in the described settings situate themselves within them (Woods, 1983; Spradley, 1980). Educational ethnography tends to localize how cultures and subcultures operate in specific social scenes, e.g., school and university buildings and classrooms, dining halls, hallways, etc. The conviction is that an educational scene or situation provides a microcosm of cultural practices, norms and beliefs, etc., in a smaller setting and at the same time reveals larger socio-cultural practices and processes. What does it mean to be “educated” in one culture or society? What skills and values are transmitted as part of the educational process? What is the official structure of roles and responsibilities assigned to actors—students, teachers, administrators, etc.—and what are the “unofficial” social groupings and dynamics employed within the school or university setting that also suggest priorities, values and social status made possible or supported by the larger surrounding culture? In order to protect the confidentiality of individuals involved in this book, I re-named the institution in question as Bishkek New University (BNU). Most of the observations and interviews that follow involve individuals within several programs of one of the administrative units of this university that I will call the Faculty of Foreign Languages (FFL). Protecting the anonymity of the FFL is not difficult, since virtually every major university in the country has such a faculty or institute. The learning of foreign languages was highly regarded and officially supported during Soviet times. It also allowed those who could study languages an indirect opportunity to learn about foreign cultures and traditions. As international fields have come to be highly sought specializations in Kyrgyz universities, intensive language study has been incorporated into virtually every international program. At the time of this writing (2009), there were 17 Foreign Language Institutes or Faculties in universities of the Kyrgyz Republic, and many instructors from such faculties were also “moonlighting” for other programs in this university or other universities where second and third languages are required.

EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT ISSUES IN TRANSITIONAL SOCIETIES The socio-cultural study of schools and universities in any period is critical, since it is within such institutions that the skills and values of the incom-

ON BEING A STUDENT AT BISHKEK NEW UNIVERSITY • 37

ing generation of a culture or society are shaped. Kyrgyzstan, however, is a “transitional” society where basic economic and social changes are underway. As I write these words (April 2010), Kyrgyzstan is in the middle of yet another political revolution that ousted its second president, who had come into power as a result of the “Tulip” revolution in 2005. If educational ethnography is of any utility in understanding important social and cultural dynamics, it should be able to witness, describe and attempt to explain what C. Wright Mills calls the fundamental task of sociology (and anthropology): what happens when and where biography meets history (Mills, 1959). If Kyrgyzstan is indeed a “transitional” society, it should be visible in fundamental shifts and conflicts over values and skills young people are expected to learn and demonstrate, and also in fights over how institutions organize themselves to provide (or oppose) such values and skills. As the following case study will suggest, the transition to adulthood for individuals as well as the social institutions in which young people are now prepared have been seriously impacted by the how history meets biography in Kyrgyzstan. Beyond these two convictions—that universities are critical cultural sites for studying cultural values and priorities, and that in transitional societies the larger issues involving social change should also be visible within the educational settings of the society—there are few formal theories or hypotheses that underlie this research. I will refer to several heuristic typologies that might be used to conceptualize organizational dynamics in pages ahead; in several instances I offer some reflections on potential explanations about descriptions I make and also attempt to acknowledge the cultural and professional biases I bring to the research. In the ethnographic tradition, a key step is to “problematize” any institutional definition of what is going on within the institution. Accordingly, I will want follow in this tradition by asking participants within the university in question to define what the university is for. The dominant conceptual paradigm utilized in discourse on post-secondary education in the 21st century is that universities are or should be directed toward instrumental skills that students learn as part of their preparations for occupational entry at one level or another (Ramirez, 2006). Human Capital economists, for example, understand today’s universities as sites for the creation of knowledge and knowledge application in modern and modernizing societies. According to them, individuals who participate as “students” gain skills required for a modern economy. This then translates into better productivity for the private sector as well as increased incomes by students who have developed their stock of skills or human capital (OECD, 1999; Meyer, Ramirez, Frank, & Shofer, 2007). This logic is often contrasted to the classical Western university model of the 18th and 19th centuries, where the university was held to be a site for a limited number of typically privileged white males to learn

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the humanities and philosophical ideals (status cultures) of Western society (Collins, 1979; Kirp, 2003). International experts and agencies who consult in former Soviet countries suggest university reforms consistent with Human Capital theory, challenging the means and ends of many Newly Independent States’ (NIS) secondary education and university practices and policies (Tempus, 2005). While they often admit the strength of “exact sciences” training in the former Soviet system, they claim that ideology rather than science dominated the curriculum, especially in humanities, and note that the decline in finances has undercut reform possibilities for all schooling levels. Many also argue that today’s higher education institutions are short on academic standards, corrupt and unresponsive to the need for new knowledge generation and see them as ineffective and inefficient (Heyneman, 2004; USAID, 2007). Interpretations of “the meaning of the university” or “the problems of the university” in the Kyrgyz Republic as defined by international higher education experts receive some attention later in this book (see Chapter 7). The current chapter, though, concentrates on how the university is constructed by insiders: students, instructors, and staff who experience this particular institution daily. To focus on internal meanings and dynamics, I attempt not to “privilege” beforehand the logic of the institution as external observers or advisors often do when they apply comparative (etic) frames of reference. Instead, I attempt to use local (emic) knowledge and understandings of local participants. As anyone who has gone to the university in the United States knows, how a student experiences a university is only partly due to “rational” or economic reasons. Otherwise, how would the importance of formal and informal events, rituals and practices such as extracurricular sports programs, fraternities, sororities, and “spring break” be explained? These are social and cultural “reasons” for attending university that are not “rational” to the outsider as they are “rational” to the insider. Even within the emic world of the university, there are both manifest and official versions of the university as articulated by those who work and study here, and unofficial and informal versions of what is going on there. Everyone as we shall soon see is busy making meaning of the rules and procedures they confront at the FFL as they try to adopt, negotiate, or avoid them. And, as also will be shown, there are a host of institutional contexts and situations that are incidental but critically important at and to the university. Thus, much of this chapter deals with spaces and places of informal backgrounds and opportunities where students, instructors and administrators live their university lives. The intent of this chapter is to further investigate identified themes, clusters of activities, or cultural patterns I witnessed in person as part of my

ON BEING A STUDENT AT BISHKEK NEW UNIVERSITY • 39

teaching experiences in Kyrgyzstan universities as well as to pursue further clarification and discussion about survey answers presented in Chapter 2. Many of the questions I pursued here were not even in my imagination prior to being immersed in these universities and before I interviewed “my” students. I turn now to the case of the Faculty of Foreign Languages (FFL) at the Bishkek New University, and my investigations of several cultural scenes and settings within it.

NOWHERE ELSE TO GO In Kyrgyzstan, the university paradoxically appears to remain an important collection point for youth today, even as its precise economic utility seems to have greatly declined. A university diploma is a highly sought after piece of paper and is locally understood as a pre-requisite for entry into almost any bureaucratic or professional position. Yet since there are fewer bureaucratic or professional positions to be had these days within the transitional (and depressed) Kyrgyz economy, and since there are declining professional opportunities in the private sector, how this diploma demand remains at a fever pitch is one of the puzzles to be answered. Meanwhile, as the economic utility for higher order intellectual skills seems in decline, the costs of attending the university is increasing. Universities here are primarily populated by young people, save for the dozens or hundreds (depending upon institutional size) of instructors and administrators who dominate them. There is no “lifelong learning” in the state institutions per se, save at the level of rhetoric. The university has become the final scene of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood for about half of the luckier youth of the country since the 1990s (Tempus, 2005). Those families who cannot afford to send their children to the university are considered poor indeed for not being able to pool the resources thought needed to afford their children a better life. What awaits many of them usually involves migrating to Russian or Kazakhstan to work in the unskilled or semi-skilled service and construction industries, staying in the country unemployed, returning to the village to raise livestock, or reselling imported Chinese and Turkish items in the bazaar. And for women there is a double burden of not only limited incomes and opportunities, but of being expected to run a household and raise three or four children, and possibly caring for their husband’s parents when they retire. In addition, women are now also primary breadwinners in some families, working in the secondary retail and produce markets. The university is literally one of the few places where young people can go during the day in Kyrgyzstan unless they still live in the village and work the fields or have out-migrated to work in semi-skilled construction or retail

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

trades in Russia or Kazakhstan. Universities are invariably in the cities, and most of the universities of prominence are located in the national capital of Bishkek. Young people who manage to get to the capital very rarely want to return to the countryside (IRIN, 2005). Many villages now experience electricity shortages, crumbling roads, no running water, and closed Sovietera shops. While ethnic Kyrgyz have a culture and many values centered on nature and the open sky, rural life is physically hard, especially in the winter months. Even the regional population centers of the country which grew dramatically during the middle of the 20th century after Soviet industrial investments are now losing significant population due to deteriorating economic and social circumstances (Schuler, 2007). Bishkek has experienced very rapid population growth in the past two decades, but social services and economic possibilities are in limited supply for adults and young people alike. Very few students have cars or disposable income in Bishkek, and most live with their parents or with other relatives—partly due to tradition, partly due to finances. Settings or locations available to girls outside their parents’ households are particularly limited, and they also have moderate restrictions from parents about when they can even be out of their apartments. Boys, meanwhile, seem to have longer hours and more unsupervised (not to be confused with approved) social and economic opportunities.

BISHKEK NEW UNIVERSITY (BNU) This case study focuses upon several student cohorts at the Faculty of Foreign Language, one academic unit of Bishkek New University (BNU). This university was chartered by the Kyrgyz Government in the mid-1990s and operates out of a complex of state-owned building in the center of the city. The president of BNU is a well-respected and internationally known academician with political connections to former presidents, the national parliament, and government ministries. Until 2005, he and the first president Akayev were both among the national educated elite and members of the Kyrgyz Academy of Science. Higher education has been widely touted as a critical mechanism for now independent Kyrgyzstan to join the international community as such participation would require degrees and diplomas in knowledge-based specializations. Kyrgyzstan was the first Central Asian country to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). BNU’s president believed right after independence that there was a burgeoning demand for university degrees and diplomas related to internet technology, international business, international law, management, etc., all of which the harbingers of the coming “market economy” proclaimed. At the same time, like almost every teacher, profes-

ON BEING A STUDENT AT BISHKEK NEW UNIVERSITY • 41

sor, or administrator who graduated from the university in Soviet times, the president of BNU believed that the inherited Kyrgyz educational system was academically superior to most others around the world, but would have to now adapt to international trends. What was needed was to add to and improve upon the former system by incorporating various modern teaching innovations and to join the international education community via internet and other distance education technologies and exchange programs. To start an elite and innovative university as envisioned, the BNU president needed to acquire classroom space, to obtain a license, and to accredit programs and specializations by the education ministry. Using his political connections, he was able within a year or two of founding the university to secure a building in the center of the city by displacing another educational institution. Although there was a window of opportunity to get a new university and programs started—since then-President Akayev was behind higher education expansion—the behind-the-scenes maneuvering used to obtain the old building was the original coup of the institution’s founding. It sits in one of the most desirable and visible locations in the city, one considered historic (by local standards), and its distinctive cupola is visible from miles away. As interest in entering higher education in the country grew and dozens of new universities were chartered, an emerging problem was how students from outside of the city would actually find information about particular universities. There was and remains official secondary school counseling and advising related to how to locate and enter the university, performed at school as a part of the upbringing process (vospitatelnyi process), a responsibility of the homeroom teachers (klassnyye rukovoditeli). University teachers also travel to secondary schools in an attempt to recruit new students to their institutions. However, this professional orientation for secondary school graduates (proforientatsiya), although compulsory for both schools and universities, does not necessarily reach all students and their parents, particularly rural individuals who only speak Kyrgyz. BNU actually benefited from this chaotic university entrance ritual, since the university lies close to other well-known universities in the city, and some out-of-town students and their parents confused BNU with those institutions when they were searching for a university to enter. BNU might be better understood as a collection of institutes, faculties, and colleges within a larger administrative structure. Its enrollment in 2008 was about 7000 students, although there are branch campuses in other cities, and students who study in “correspondence” mode (where they make brief trips to the campus for instruction and exams at prescribed intervals), or in some “virtual” capacity. For purposes of this analysis, BNU is classified as a state university: it rents government buildings, accepts some budget or scholarship students, awards state approved diplomas, and pays its faculty

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Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic

on the state approved salary schedule. Defining a university as state or nonstate (private) is somewhat complicated in Kyrgyzstan, since higher education reforms of the 1990s allowed most state universities to create administratively separate private divisions or institutes within them. For example, BNU plans to limit accepting national scholarship or budget students soon, claiming that it costs more to educate them than the government provides. The university president argues that he can now fill almost every available space in one or another (private) institute with students who will pay far more than the government does. Since independence, universities have become profitable undertakings in Kyrgyzstan, and those who run them have become comparatively wealthy. Fiscal accountability and transparency issues almost always arise in university governance, particularly when it comes to how the private units in state universities operate. Accordingly, these universities often see routine leadership changes with the coming and going of new parliaments and presidents. Often friends or relatives of powerful politicians are appointed to senior administrative positions in universities. But BNU’s president has weathered official government investigations of the university’s budgeting and accounting, even though he was taken to court over government allegations of fraud. A frequent tactic for lying low during official university corruption investigations is to enter long-term hospital care due to one diagnosed illness or another, awaiting rescue by powerful friends in the government. Like other rectors often do, BNU’s president has managed to utilize the “too ill to be removed” technique—among others—to weather several political storms over the decades. He claims he created this institution, and he will never give it up. Through all of the allegations and investigations of university corruption at BNU, its president has maintained a “business as usual” attitude. In 2008, for example, he announced the opening of a new international program for foreign students, at the same time as he criticized the education ministry for its old ways. His ability to openly chastise the ministry underscores his continued political support in high places. The local press covered his announcement this way: New standards of distance education have been successfully introduced at (BNU), which recently opened a new (distance education institute) … which goes along with (another new) Institute. Both institutes have about 440 students from abroad (enrolled). According to (the BNU president), the Kyrgyz higher education system does not meet world standards: “Our system has not changed. It is similar to the education system under the Soviet Union.”

Created (theoretically) to teach new subjects (information technologies) and a different student body (foreign students), this also allowed the university to charge higher tuition and have less oversight from the govern-

ON BEING A STUDENT AT BISHKEK NEW UNIVERSITY • 43

ment. A decade earlier, BNU created the “Kyrgyz Internet Academy” (KIA), where the Faculty of Foreign Languages now resides. The FFL, which is thus organizationally underneath both the KIA and BNU, has several different curricular specializations. Yet there is much overlap and duplication of curricular concentration and duplication of faculty competence within the university. For example, foreign languages like English are taught in several institutes and institutes, but English teachers have neither common contexts for interaction nor a university-wide collective. Since languages are popular at BNU and most specializations or majors require two or more years of this or another language, each institute may have several of their own language teachers who only work within their respective unit. So the typical student at BNU in the FFL spends much of his or her time in general studies during the first two years of their program, but all concentrate on their specialization in subsequent years. Students often recognize and have definite opinions about “their” faculty versus those who teach general studies. As we shall see, they identify primarily with teachers of the FFL, with whom they develop much closer ties.

COMING AND GOING: STUDENT COHORTS IN THE FFL Students at the FFL are organized into cohort groups and required to attend anywhere from four to six hours of instruction per day, five or six days per week, with their own group and by year three mostly with their own faculty. Groups are composed of about 14–20 same-aged students who attend classes together and as a rule study and socialize together almost exclusively. Sometimes these groups are as small as 8–10. Students identify themselves as being from a particular group which has its own code related to year of study. These groups also often get together outside of class and sometimes on weekends. They celebrate holidays together, lend money for small daily expenses, and help each other with their homework and assignments (or let their friends copy their homework and assignments) This has all been made even easier in the 21st century with the utilization of cell phones, easy access to photocopying machines, and the internet. Most students can keep in constant communication with their group-mates throughout the university, the city, and even when they are out of the city. Cell phones are particularly helpful to almost all students here where schedules and room assignments often change, and teachers are sometimes sick or late to class. Students in nearby cafés or on the internet at the university or down the street can and do call each other with hourly updates of what teacher is where, what room they are supposed to convene in, when the daily posted schedule proves to not be accurate, and what the group has decided to do at the end of the day. Often individual students in twos or

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threes are somewhere on campus but not attending particular classes as the mood or situation strikes them. When disinterested students discover that a teacher is already 10 minutes late to a 50 minute class, particularly if she is “boring,” they may just skip the class altogether. But they may be ready for action once it is done, and await news of where the group is going next. So the cell phone is a vital communication tool around BNU, the KIA, and certainly to students at the FFL. Although Bishkek New University proclaims to be an elite university with a distinguished faculty and the best students in the country, these descriptors seem not to explain the situation within the KIA, which appears to have intentionally targeted underserved national markets. The majority of students I encountered at the FFL were originally from rural Kyrgyzstan rather than from Bishkek. Most faculty were young and without advanced degrees. All FFL students I worked with were also “contract” students, meaning they paid tuition of about $450 per year (in 2007–2008). Many had also entered without having taken the new National Scholarship Test (see Chapter 7), or with marginal scores on it. Several hundred students from a neighboring South Asian developing country were also attending the KIA, and often because they did not have the grades or examination scores that would have allowed them to enter their own national universities. The demographics of BNU and the FFL would end up being keys to understanding its dynamics. Transportation matters are also important to understand the dynamics of student life here. In Bishkek, as in other Central Asian countries, the city center is a desirable place to live. Since FFL students are typically not from elite families, they come to the university on bus or on a minibus (marshrutka) from outside the center. The city is ringed with micro-districts of high-rise apartment blocs built in the 1950s and 1960s, and smaller villages spread out along the main highways into the city. A typical student might board the marshrutka at 7 or 7:30 in the morning in his or her microdistrict in order to make it to campus by 8, when many classes are supposed to begin. Some students come from further distances, perhaps one of the neighboring towns 15, 20, or even 30 kilometers away. And there are many students at BNU whose parents live “in the village,” hours from Bishkek. Such students usually stay with other relatives in the city—uncles, brothers, or sisters—during the week and may go home on weekends. Students whose residence is hours away often take Mondays or Fridays off from classes unless there is some particularly compelling event to bring them back to the city. Almost no one lives alone, and living in a university hostel is seen as a last resort, particularly by parents. Students also return on the marshrutka, the same way they came, but their departure times are more varied. Daily classes are organized according to the official learning plan and the scheduled is approved before the semester begins. In practice, when teachers are sick or otherwise unavail-

ON BEING A STUDENT AT BISHKEK NEW UNIVERSITY • 45

able and there are no substitutes to fill in, “windows” (okna) appear on the schedule—free time for students between other lectures. If the free time is in the morning or at midday, students usually stay close by. If the schedule is open toward the end of the day and what comes seems not particularly interesting, some students start to drift off, especially since busses to most parts of town run every few minutes. Alternatively, there are a few students who linger as long as possible near the university, since for them home has less appeal on a daily basis than whatever might get organized by their group at the end of the day.

WHAT STUDENTS WEAR Denim, leather, and vinyl are standard wear in and around most Kyrgyz universities. Especially for girls, going to the university is a big social event. Many students wear their best jeans, the more rhinestones and zippers the better. Jeans are variations of dark blue and usually “distressed” to some degree. Here Bishkek, next to the Chinese western border, all sorts of imported goods and clothing are readily available. One of the largest wholesale markets to buy Chinese and Turkish goods in Central Asia, the Dordoi, is a twenty-minute ride from the campus. Designer (or so-labeled) jeans there cost from ten to twenty dollars, which is cheap by world standards but expensive for local families. Students do not have lockers or other private storage spaces at BNU, no designated spaces in the library or offices, and do not typically carry many books with them. Paradoxically, it is easy to tell the difference between secondary school and university students out on the street by comparing the book bags or backpacks of the two. The schoolboys and schoolgirls are the ones with the most textbooks and notebooks. At the university level, there is no western style culture of printed “hand-outs” for classes. So there is only the occasional backpack that a university boy might have, while most young women—who prefer being called “girls”—carry good-sized Chinese copies of designer purses in various shades of black, red, or brown. Sometimes young women will carry a book in their purse, or a towel if they are supposed to take swimming in their Physical Training class. But for the most part, both boys and girls leave their few books at home instead of carrying them to the university. “Studying” at BNU seems not a primary undertaking; rather, hanging out and moving through the day with the group or one’s friends is. Many students believe that to “study” is to locate and download information from the internet that will be read aloud in class and might actually be discussed. Completing a short worksheet or fill-in-the-blank assignment to hand in is often the extent of daily homework for many.

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Globalization trends are thus quite visible around BNU, where young women have come to wear tight fitting dark vinyl jackets in the colder months, returning to brighter color sweaters in fall and spring. These are all to be found at Dordoi. First glance suggests that most BNU students are ethnically Kyrgyz, but there are some ethnically Russian students as well. The Russian girls seem just a bit bolder, occasionally wearing miniskirts and fashionable fishnet stockings, sometimes accompanied by a sheer blouse. The Kyrgyz and other “eastern” girls very rarely bare their legs or expose their shoulders, but neither do they attempt to hide their figures in loosely fitting garments: hip-hugging jeans and bare midriffs are becoming more in fashion on the street. The occasional small tattoo can be seen, but body piercing is rarer. Long black straight hair or in braids is common among the Kyrgyz girls, who appear to use less make-up compared to the Russian students. Even so, teachers and parents complain that the current generation is very different from when they were students. Many bemoan the impact of international and Western trends and the on-rushing consumer culture that is affecting their children, much as other parents around the world. The boys on campus dress more causally. Denim for them, too, is the norm, but there is little evidence that any of them have been perusing Cosmopolitan Magazine for dressing hints. T-shirts and sweatshirts bearing Western or Russian mottos can be seen under denim or leather coats, and the shoe style is definitely Turkish or European: invariably black and with long toes. The other option is athletic footwear for boys, often accompanied by a sports-equipment bag. Athletic training suits with stripes down the arms and legs are also popular. Boys, too, come to the university for the day, and many incorporate some sort of physical training (weight-lifting, boxing, karate) into their schedules, either during the daytime or on the way home in the evening. Bishkek is dotted by dozens of sports clubs to which many young men belong. The only other “accessory” sometimes seen being carried by male students is the very small briefcase or clear plastic notebook case. These are perhaps seven inches wide and nine inches long in which they may carry a “copybook” (tetrad) and some pencils or pens.

DEFINING WHO STUDENTS ARE: COHORT MEMBERS AND INSTITUTIONAL PRODUCTS Much of what occurs in many social settings and situations around the university is not what their designers or administrators originally had in mind. Both students and teachers have an important ability to interpret, define and negotiate instruction and instructional agreements to their advantage (Woods, 1983). Such observations are certainly true at BNU. Survey results reported in Chapter 2 suggested a variety of opinions regarding student af-

ON BEING A STUDENT AT BISHKEK NEW UNIVERSITY • 47

fection and non-affection for various aspects of their university education. Here we will attempt to study how both satisfied and less satisfied students interpret and negotiate an institutional setting that itself is under various sorts of operational distress related to the national transitional context. One entering Western heuristic to situate students in any educational environment is offered by Philip Schlechty (1976). He argues that how students position themselves in educational institutions (i.e., how committed they are to its aims), as well as how the institution defines student learning, are both key ingredients to analyzing how they operate. Schlechty specifies three different student categories with altering levels of commitment to the means and ends of classroom and organizational participation. According to him, some students are morally “committed” to the institutional mission and participate eagerly and enthusiastically to teacher requests and mandates. Other students “calculate” their participation in classroom and school life, choosing to come and go as they are able or interested in what is happening. Finally, there are those students who are completely alienated from classroom dynamics and choose to withdraw from active participation. Meanwhile, educational organizations must decide (or be mandated) to define the level of participation they expect students to demonstrate and the amount of control students are to be given. Are they “products,” required to pass exit exams that only teachers can prepare them for? Are they “clients,” who have studied various options and chosen a particular school or university in an attempt to acquire particular skills they desire? Or are they “members” of the school or university who have the ability—together with their professors—to determine both the process and outcomes of their instruction? This typology will provide us some categories or language ahead, since much that follows will deal with issues of student commitment to university aims, as well as university definitions of who students are. For instance, in Kyrgyz higher education student commitment is often commitment to the status of “being a student,” as well as commitment to their cohort; that is, the other students in the group. These can supersede any particular commitment to professed instructional aims of the institution. It might be the case that students come to the university and attend classes they do not even fully comprehend in order to be with their group mates and to enjoy their status as a student. Meanwhile, the universities are in transition, as are their definitions of adequate instructional outcomes. I intend to rely informally upon Schlechty’s typology to describe student commitment to the university and its aims as well as how BNU defines students in pages ahead. Kyrgyz universities have seen major changes since the Soviet era. Where once university entrance was highly selective and required student academic rigor and loyalty to the Soviet ideal, now the university is much less selec-

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tive, competing for even marginal students. How the universities define students and what they are to learn is also more problematic, and sometimes the “skills” students are expected to master seem not well understood even by those who are supposed to teach them. For example, some instructors teach in international fields without sufficient training or experience in these areas and are using the same internet sources as the students that they are supposedly teaching. How can students be defined as products or clients when they frequently know as much about the topic of study as their teachers? Meanwhile, both the Soviet authoritarian tradition and Kyrgyz deference to age also undercut possibilities of students being considered as clients (or members) in terms of institutional decision-making. At BNU, for instance, many of the instructors are relatively young, which immediately diminishes their authority among students their age. On the other hand, if we want to expand upon the notion of “clients” proposed by Schlechty, students might be considered as clients within their programs of study, because many actually “negotiate” prices for services rendered: many students informally make deals and use family and personal connections to compensate for missed assignments and poor performance, a phenomenon that was considerably rarer during the Soviet era.

ON STUDENT SERVICES, CHOICES, AND ACTIVITIES Kyrgyz state universities look on surface like city colleges in the US and Europe. They educate mostly commuting students and provide no dormitories or recreational spaces. One of these differences is that they provide no student “services” outside of the class. There are no counseling offices, athletics departments, career placement centers, student activities boards, student loan offices, work-study programs, or other institutional services that students might need or want. Deans and teachers are asked or volunteer to perform some of these duties on an as-needed basis because the university operates in a more personal and collectivist fashion. Many services are provided due to personal relationships developed between the students and their instructors within the university or mandated by administrators as part of the expectations for teachers, but they are not organizationally institutionalized. State universities only work during the day and mandate seat-time in classes. Libraries and reading rooms are closed after-hours, on Sundays and holidays. Students are on their own to find and complete assignments or locate additional resources at BNU or at the city library, which is also closed in the evening and on weekends. The private sector has recognized the possibilities of placeless students roaming the streets looking for sites to

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occupy, which might be argued as a positive: there is a proliferation of internet cafés in Bishkek for those who want to study outside of class. And in fact, “negotiating” the university actually depends upon this outside resource, since many teachers send students to the cafés to complete assignments (e.g., printing out information from a website). Students in state Kyrgyz universities would officially be defined in Schlechty’s typology as “products” of the education system. An easy test of this can be interpreted from their academic scheduling protocols. Course flexibility is expected in many Western universities, where individual students often have to pick and choose which courses they take to meet university and career requirements. Kyrgyz students do not have this difficulty or opportunity at all; they make virtually no choices. Once they enter a specialization, they undertake all the same courses as everyone else in their cohort. The few things most students and parents will know in advance is that the university will open on September 1, and there will be two semesters ending with examinations with a large semester break in winter and a two-month summer vacation. Since students are typically required to be at the university from six to eight hours per day, no great care is given to provide them with written advanced warning or understanding of the curricular road ahead. Although instructors do write course syllabi, universities do not typically provide students with course syllabi where their topics or objectives for coursework to be undertaken during the year are detailed. Teachers follow a highly specified learning plan (uchebnyi plan), but students do not receive this information in advance. The routine for students is to show up at the university and undergo whatever teachers have decided is to be accomplished on the day in question. The schedule is thus only to be found in the teacher’s learning plan, often tied to whatever textbook is being used for the class. Special events and activities sometimes designed to include students might be extensively planned and rehearsed in advance, but exactly where and when they will occur is usually only orally announced at the last moment, and the word is spread informally within the student body (and now by cell phone). Time confusion in the academic calendar would actually interfere with students’ personal agendas if they were able to and needed to make individual life plans not involving the university. The exact timing of national holidays is often unclear until the event is several days away, sometimes because the national government does not announce changes in work days versus holidays within a week until just before they are supposed to occur. For example, in March, universities celebrate such events as Women’s Day (March 8), Nooruz (Eastern New Year, either March 21, 22 or 23), and until just recently the Day of the “Tulip Revolution” (March 24). In May, Labor Day is celebrated (May 1), Constitution Day (May 5), and Victory Day (May 9). Some of these holidays are inherited from Soviet times; others added

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since national independence. Exactly how many days in a row these holidays will be celebrated and when everyone who works or studies has to return to their institutions is unpredictable, because the government decides whether it is Saturday or Sunday that is to be celebrated. As I sat in Bishkek writing this chapter draft (April 30, 2008), BNU was already closed for the May 1st holiday, and none of the state universities whose students are the subject of this study had announced whether university would resume on May 2, May 3, or May 6, since May 5 was another national holiday. The local guess was that all students would in effect have a six day holiday to celebrate two closely-timed events. But students were the last ones to know. Bishkek residents call the first two weeks of May “red weeks,” meaning no work will be done during this time. Red is the color of ink used on the local calendars to signify a state holiday and no school or work. At BNU and other universities where English was a specialization, the university could informally hold their own internal celebration. For Valentine’s Day (February 14) at the FFL, for example, there are teacher parties and lunches, and classes are cancelled so everyone can attend special student performance or events, even though the classes were still scheduled as usual according to time schedule in the hall. How students and teachers were to make up for the missed but mandated clock hours of lectures and seminars in the state learning plan is rarely calculated or explained. There is a predictable historical reason for the ambiguity of the actual (if not the stated) scheduling of university events. Unlike a Western university—where students are coming and going, taking different courses within a credit hour system, and organizing other individual events around the university calendar—in Kyrgyz universities from Soviet times, all students were in contact with teachers and administrators from six to eight hours a day in collective pursuits. Since students and faculty then (and now) are theoretically engaged in 100% of all activities all the time, a change in plan or direction initiated from the top could and can be almost instantly instituted all the way down the chain of command. Student class schedules have inherited this structure and can change daily and sometimes hourly as needed to accommodate to other needs of the larger institution, as determined by the rector or dean. “Making up” for a missed class did not happen previously and does not happen in the local university system. Since there is no syllabus as a working contract on material to be covered on any given day, a topic a teacher might have covered in her learning plan might be given some other time, and work due re-negotiated later. And outside the classroom, student cohorts are still also organized by teachers for festivals, cleaning the surrounding blocks of the city, or to attend political rallies in addition to whatever instructional objectives teachers might have. However, the university has lost some of the moral and practical imperatives they once enjoyed regarding student compliance, since it is no longer involved

ON BEING A STUDENT AT BISHKEK NEW UNIVERSITY • 51

with administering stipends for students or in linking them to their first jobs.

THE CHANGED SITUATION FOR STUDENTS Kyrgyz state universities today still utilize organizational strategies that worked during Soviet times, but these strategies no longer reflect local realities and most students understand this. On the one hand, students are paying fees instead of receiving stipends, and they also have to find other ways into work besides the university. Universities, meanwhile, can only stay in business or grow by retaining students and continuing to receive their tuition. So, the university had more control over the entire lives of students a generation ago than they do today, even though they pursue similar organizational practices. BNU rhetorically expects students to behave in ways Soviet, but in practice things do not work this way. When a student left the university after a full day in lectures and seminars in the 1970s or 1980s, s/he was likely to go to the city library to complete assignments or home to do household chores. But today, when students finish classes, they more typically go to a restaurant to visit with other students, or to an internet café to quickly download an assignment they might turn in and then spend an hour on the web or find out who is “friending” or “poking” them on Facebook. Some are now also working part-time low-skill jobs they have found for themselves or through their family connections. Although the university theoretically occupies a significant part of a student’s day, it has little control of many current student activities both during and after classes. The market economy and “democracy” means finding other ways to careers and adult life, even if the universities attempt to remain the same. None of the students I worked with in 2007 and 2008 lived in a dormitory or apartment linked with BNU, nor had any daily interactions with officials of the university who were not teachers or immediate administrators. Students could be and were charged to help in cleaning their classrooms or repainting their rooms, but only a few engaged enthusiastically, and some actively resisted. They realized they were paying for their studies, and seemed unconcerned about serious consequences for lackluster participation, except for the very few who were committed to the career possibilities of the institution. The expectation is that students will be at the university most every day for six to eight hours, albeit with occasional “windows” where students are between classes and have free time. Yet during this free time there are few university settings where they can individually work or pursue recreation. So where do students spend the rest of their hours, since there is no student

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center or casual sitting area, and the several smaller locations for “hanging out” are restricted to certain students at certain times only? At the FFL reading room, for example, there are about half a dozen chairs in which to sit and students are monitored closely by the room administer to make sure nothing is stolen. In such situations the staff often want to know “why are you here?” rather than “how can we help you?” So students have found a variety of other places to be when they are at the university.

PLACES TO BE: ON THE STREET A favorite loitering place for students as they arrive from home on the marshrutka are the front steps of the building. The street outside, as well as the walkways and stairs leading up to the large plate glass windows, are pitted and cracked with age, as if they have not been repaired since the 1950s when the building was built. Four heavy, uneven aluminum frame doors lead into the building. Yet, only one set of inner and outer doors is ever unlocked and useable at a time. Rather than propping them open, they are wrapped with old cotton towels to keep them from slamming closed as hundreds of students move through the entry way every hour. Depending upon the weather, there could be 10 to 20 students standing at the landing in front of the doors, or up to a hundred. Small same-sex groups arrive from the different directions, the boys invariably shaking hands as they join the group as if they had not seen each other for months instead of hours, the girls greeting each other with a kiss on the cheek. The main university entrance does not lead to the classrooms used by students of the Internet Academy: BNU is rather a collection of separately constructed buildings that adjoin but are not directly connected to each other on the inside. The main corridor leads to some of the faculty spaces of the various general studies departments (e.g., sociology, informatics), and the large and well-furnished conference room on the first floor is reserved for important meetings with government dignitaries and foreign embassy delegations. Along the hallway, there are photos and displays of the senior administrators and faculty members receiving awards from government ministries and foreign visitors, books written in the past 30 years by either current or previous academicians, and maps and pictures suggesting university international connections. Here we are led to understand that BNU is a member of prominent European, American and Asian university associations which in some way recognize the university as a partner. In one large photo display the university president is shown among national dignitaries signing an agreement to join in the Bologna Process. The purpose of this initiative is to create a shared “European higher education area by making academic degree standards and quality assurance more

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comparable and compatible throughout Europe” (Bologna Process, 2009). The date on the photos is 1999. In fact, there is only a remote possibility that any Kyrgyz state university will ever actually become a full member of this international consortium, since it would have to abide by European standards rather than Kyrgyz, and since theoretically only European Union members are eligible to be full partners in any credential agreements. According to the Lisbon Recognition Convention of Qualifications (2004), universities of the Kyrgyz Republic are actually ineligible to officially join Bologna, for they are not party to the overarching European Cultural Convention of the Council of Europe. Yet the promise that BNU will one day become a Bologna member and thus recognized in Western Europe remains prominent in university displays as a part of their public relations strategy. I consider the various internationalization proposals and the possibility that places like BNU to ever really become internationally recognized in Chapter 7. The Kyrgyz Internet Academy has some designated spaces in the main building, and second and higher group students are allowed to use two small computer labs several hours a day, several days a week. Second-course students also had a scheduled Saturday TOEFL class on the third floor in 2008, and occasionally were permitted to have class in the large lecture hall on the second floor. They could also go to the university library, although students complained that most books were from the Soviet era. But the main purpose for KIA students entering the university buildings appeared to be to get to the university canteen (stolovaya, or cafeteria), and to briefly stop (girls in particular) in front of a huge floor-length mirror straighten their clothes or brush their hair.

GOING TO CLASS When students arrive at the university, they may have some idea of the time and location of the day’s lectures, but the space may change from day to day or hour to hour. Also, teachers sometimes call in sick at the last moment or do not come in to work on time, so the actual starting time for a lesson often varies from what is officially posted. This means that the first thing any FFL student who plans to go to class needs to do when arriving at the university is to head to the week’s glass-encased official time schedule located on the third floor of their building. Almost all classes are held in the 10–12 rooms of this corridor. Here the students will congregate (or have a group member attend) to see what is supposed to happen today, where it is proposed to happen, and if there have been any changes. Different room numbers or different instructors could be written on the schedule, but only

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careful inspection on an hourly basis will yield the correct and updated information. On the other hand, if a teacher is absent and a particular class will not meet on a given day, this information might be transmitted orally rather than as posted. Some students will have to go to the scheduled class and learn this for themselves first-hand, or receive the news from a classmate who calls them on their cell. Written classroom changes on the board are not always correct either. Often a group of students goes to the listed classroom and finds it is already occupied. Then they scurry up and down the hall to find a vacant place. Some classrooms are actually less “available” than others under any circumstance; more senior teachers have been able to stake out particular rooms as their own territory for their own lectures and seminars. You can tell when you are trespassing on protected turf; there are personal artifacts, books, chalk or curtained windows visible. Otherwise, classrooms are pretty bleak places. The curriculum for all university specializations is highly prescribed and consists of thousands of mandatory clock hours of attendance over a four or five year program. The BNU president claims his university is more modern than others in the country, and mandatory classroom clock hours are reduced, especially after the second year of required general education subjects. In this case, he may be correct: students in comparable fields at the other universities I studied between 2007 and 2009 did in fact appear to have longer required hours of lectures during the week. Nevertheless, at BNU, most students in most programs are theoretically required to attend from 30–40 classroom hours per week over six days, excluding Sunday. The truth is, at the several state universities where I conducted fieldwork, the prescribed hours of mandatory instruction never matched the actual number of hours students attended. First of all, between 10 and 20% of formally scheduled classes just never met. Several teachers during this period were routinely missing, the typical reason given as “being ill.” In addition, the special events (previously mentioned) were often organized during the day, which precluded the normal schedule. Sometimes a teacher might cancel a class when only a handful of students showed up. If a dean or director needed someone to write a report required by the education ministry, work on a grant proposal, or accompany an important visitor around, he or she could pull an instructor out of class at any time and reassign her to such a task—leaving students to fend for themselves for an hour or two. For example, several local conferences related to document translation occurred during the semester in 2008, and the classes of two or three teachers were canceled. Students did not know this until they arrived. Since the teaching staff at the FFL is stretched thin, rarely is there an available teacher to

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substitute for a colleague who called in sick at the last minute or who was interested or told to attend an important meeting or event. In the several groups I worked with, there were also fairly predictable patterns of absence among certain students, sometimes because they anticipated teacher absences pretty well. Even for the more committed students there were days when fewer than half of the group might attend, even for the better teachers. And even if a lecture or seminar would eventually be well attended, 20 or 30% of the students might enter the class (of 50 minutes) 10–15 minutes late. The typical absence percentage I experienced as a teacher among the first, second, and third year groups (first course, second course, and third course) at the FFL was between 20 to 30%. That is, if a group was theoretically composed of 20 students, I would expect between 12 and 15 would come to class on a good day. There were students who rarely came to classes at all, sometimes once or twice a month. They were proclaimed as part of the group when asked about, and their names remained on the grade list in the hallway, but this of course stretches the conceptualization of what a student is and what a group is. There were groups at the FFL who collaborated as a group; and then there were groups which were primarily only names on a university list. The particular student group into which I was virtually adopted (in 2008) was a second year Western Studies cohort—the equivalent of sophomores. The director of the FFL suggested I work with them since they were among the “most active” students in her institute. The previous year these students constituted two smaller groups, and in 2007 I spent some time with both. But high attrition the first year and teacher shortages led to their combination into one group, officially composed of 17 students. Yet only six or eight of these students regularly came to class, and another five or six were often but not always there. One or two of them might disappear for a week or more and then re-appear. Three rarely came at all, and one almost never. By 2009, this group had lost two students to other pursuits, but added a student who had dropped out the year before from a different cohort.

THE CANTEEN Between classes and even when they are supposed to be in classes, many students of the FFL congregate on the first floor of the main university building. The university stolovaya is open from about 8 am until around 3 pm. Students prefer to call the stolovaya the “canteen,” since to them it sounds “Western.” The canteen room is approximately 60 meters long and 30 meters wide. Furniture for the space consists of about 16 tables and perhaps 100 white resin chairs that even in Kyrgyzstan might ordinarily be seen outside at a sidewalk café. Tables are all covered in pinkish floral design plastic

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sheeting. On one long wall are windows to the street; the other wall is an off-white solid concrete. At one end of the dining area is a large kitchen, and smaller snack-bar area nearer the main entrance. For those wanting a hot meal during the day, the kitchen produces several adequate dishes, including entrée items that satisfy both the Russian and Kyrgyz palate. At the snack bar, cakes, tea, coffee, and soft drinks are almost always available during the daytime. Both food services appear to be run as a concession to the university; students are asked to leave the area unless they are eating something bought from the kitchen. In the colder months of the year (November–March), the canteen served as one of the principle congregating places on campus. Six to eight students, usually from the same group, routinely set up camp here between classes when their break was more than ten minutes. Rarely did students buy complete meals from the kitchen, making do with cookies or a sandwich and maybe a cold drink. Most ate nothing during the day, preferring to hold on to their limited resources. Few appeared to bring any food from home and preferred rather to just wait until the end of the day to have a meal after university. Sometimes over snacks, students copied each other’s homework or jointly completed what was to be an individual assignment due for the next class. No one ever seemed concerned about covering up or protecting individual answers; in fact, each group believed that collective work was an important component of being a group member. If and when assignments were completed—as well as during such “working” sessions—cell phones were in constant use. Often, students text-messaged one another to find out where missing group-mates were. And then, at some magic moment, someone in the group would announce that it was time to move on, either to the next class or to one of the other collecting places in or around the building. By 2009 there were new dining options in Bishkek that had ostensibly targeted youth. “Okie-Dokie” was a novel fast-food chain in Bishkek and became a favorite of my students. They preferred it to the university canteen, since the staff at the new place would not run off lagging customers done with their meal, and the students could move pretty tables and chairs together to create bigger collectives for chatting and visiting. However, when one or more students might have a hunger crisis but no cash, they would have to return to the canteen to ask for soup or tea on credit. The canteen would let you pay them later, which was not the case at Okie-Dokie. INTERNET CAFÉS BNU earned its early reputation in the mid-1990s for opening programs in internet technologies, announcing it was a leader in interactive worldwide

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connectivity using the latest equipment and methodologies. However, in spring of 2008 there was no retrievable university-wide website, although the FFL has been helped by several visiting foreigners to establish its own. Modern times and the private sector appear to have passed them by. The university does have clusters of computers sprinkled around campus available to some students at some times during the day and as part of some instructional programs. But access is limited, speeds are slow, and these computers are full of viruses according to students in my groups. The students I worked with across several specializations prefer and use computer facilities off-campus; although they complain that they should not have to. Two off-site locations for using the internet—small and restricted but free—were provided at the building of the Soros Foundation and the national library. In actuality, my students mostly used one of the half dozen fee-paying internet cafés just up the street from the university. These sites charged about 75 cents per hour during the daytime in 2008; rising to a dollar an hour a year later. Students were sometimes here instead of in the university during the daytime, as well as in the evening to take advantage of lower rates. Internet companies have grown exponentially in Bishkek over the past five years, and now there are local internet chains whose computer equipment is virtually world-class. At the corner opposite of BNU is a sizeable internet café with about 40 high speed computers, where students can also buy cell phone minutes/cards, soft drinks by the glass, and where they can download and print files from their flash-drives or photocopy documents. The name of the company is Shmel (Russian for bumblebee), and its services are most of what a BNU student really needs at the university on a daily basis, and what they claim their university does not provide. Internet cafés must certainly be among the most profitable businesses in town, which is one of the reasons almost every place has an in-house security guard. A small percentage of FFL students and instructors had a personal computer at home, but all of them still needed internet because it was more expensive to access from home, and the connection is bad even in the center of the city, let alone in the micro-districts where almost everyone lives. Students are attracted at Shmel and the other nearby internet cafés by the dazzling monitor screens where advertisements for clothes, dating, and other products of interest to young people immediately appear and scroll across the page. Most of the students had their own email accounts and various aliases to enter chat rooms. The first business for them in the internet café was to check their email, hoping for words from distant friends via Facebook or competing Russian social networking sites. More local correspondence appeared usually unnecessary for students: They have adapted quickly to the world of the tweet, poke, and text message.

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Seemingly a second-order function of the internet was to do web searches for material for class. Many FFL classes provide materials for class and assignment sheets, but most also require home tasks that involve finding material on the web, downloading, and sometimes presenting this information in class. Bishkek New University does have a lending library, but foreign language students complain that materials in English, French or German—all taught in the FFL—are not in adequate supply there, and books mostly date from Soviet times. So, most university students are referred to the national library, or to an internet café. It costs students a nominal fee to enter the city library, and much if not most of a report or presentation can be taken from an internet source.

WALKING AT THE PHILHARMONIA The Kyrgyz State Philharmonic Theatre is one of the most impressive and significant physical and cultural centers in the city of Bishkek. It is here where national plays and performances are staged, and it lies at the crossroads of two of the city’s busiest streets. A huge and beautiful statue of the Kyrgyz epic folk hero Manas is situated just in front of the Philharmonia, flanked on the right by the statue of Kanakei, one of his most important wives, and a statue of his trusted advisor to the left. Students are very familiar with the Philharmonia, not necessarily because they actually frequent the music hall or theatre, but because many spend good portions of the day walking around the building or in circles next to it when the weather is good. There are several universities in the vicinity of the Philharmonia. A huge pedestrian mall or walkway on the east side extends from the city mayor’s office southward toward the KyrgyzNationalUniversity, almost a kilometer away. This walkway is dotted by garden areas where the city still maintains roses every spring and turns on numerous fountains; it is clearly designated as a city showcase, and new pavers have been extensively laid where once Soviet concrete used to lie. There are also dozens of large and recently painted city benches along these walkways. These are invariably occupied by hundreds of students from the surrounding universities throughout any given university day and into the evening. Between classes, and during classes sometimes, students congregate next to the Philharmonia to meet and greet. In point of fact, walking up and down and around the mall is a destination point for many during the day. It is also a good place to “pair up” for couples starting a new romance or continuing one in progress, for just walking with your girlfriend or for female students. It is certainly a great location for groups of boys for flirting with groups of girls passing by. Walking at the Philharmonia is free, the scenery

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is beautiful, and preoccupations with looking and talking with members of the opposite sex is easily done from the sanctity of a student group. And if something quasi-academic is required of you one day, a small remodeled shop where you can download internet files or photocopy a document is available just next to the ice-cream cart.

Students arriving via Marshrutka at Arabaev University, Bishkek”

English Language Group, International University of Kyrgyzstan

CHAPTER 4

ON BEING A STUDENT AT BISHKEK NEW UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, STUDENT GROUPS, AND CLASSES

Chapter 3 concluded by describing a host of scenes and settings where those who actually come to the university on a daily basis congregate and spend good portions of their time in social interaction. In this chapter, I concentrate on the Faculty of Foreign Languages (FFL) locations where academic instruction or learning opportunities are supposed to occur, even if this proves not to always be the case. I introduce some students and student groups and their understanding and negotiation of the instructional contexts. How Bishkek New University (BNU) “markets” its services to parents and students is also part of this chapter. LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES PROVIDED FOR FFL STUDENTS The FFL indeed provides several dedicated learning locations outside of the classroom: reading, resource, and computer rooms. The Reading Lost in Transition: Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic pages 61–82 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing 61 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Room is a small and relatively comfortable area in the basement of the old dormitory building, with more recent vintage tables and chairs and stacks of books and other materials for students to use. I only found out about this room, however, because the university used this location to convene their celebration for the national spring holiday, Nooruz, in 2008: about one third of the 350 students and staff of the program crowded into the room built to hold about 40 students. For this multi-national festival and competition, the student teams were dressed in Kyrgyz, Kazakh, and Uzbek national costume. National dishes were cooked and brought in by students and teachers, songs were sung, girls from each national group danced, and posters created by students were arranged around the room. Distinguished visitors had to score which performances and displays were the best. Naturally, the Kyrgyz team won most of the honors. Also, as is typical, celebrating this event cancelled classes for the entire day: all the teachers were there, even though not all students required to be there showed up. Later in the week I became curious to know if and when students actually utilized the academic resources of the Reading Room. A few said that they occasionally went down there to study, but others declared the setting of little interest to them, for two reasons: firstly, most of the materials were in Russian and not useful for any of the languages or cultures they had assignments to work on. This room in fact contains materials for the university at large and is only helpful to FFL students in their first two years of general studies (e.g., political science, sociology, or ecology). Secondly, the Reading Room monitor enforced strict quiet upon students—they could not use their cell phones or work together on assignments, since it would create too much noise. This same issue was raised when I discovered the Resource Room on the second floor of the dormitory/classroom building. This space was full of stacks of textbooks, mostly in English. Students reported that most of these materials were only for the use of the international Asian students who lived in the rooms above. There were only six or seven chairs in this room, suggesting materials might be borrowed, although I never saw any students actually doing this. More interesting to me was that there was a dedicated staff person for this collection, and the room was better furnished and repaired than the classrooms used for instruction. Computer access and computer rooms are available across the university, however, each group within each specialization had different sorts of computer time and space allocations. FFL students complained that what was promised them in terms of computer access was different than what they found. First course (freshman) students told me that they discovered that they were not eligible to have open access to computer facilities on-campus. Second course students were scheduled for computer class on their Learning Plan, but otherwise their computer access was limited. This was because

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the computer room was in reality a classroom with scheduled instruction six or eight hours per day. It was therefore only “free” for a couple of hours in the afternoon before the university closed for the evening. In the favorite FFL computer room there were seven computers reserved for students,often fully occupied during afternoon “free” computer time. During class time, these seven computers were typically shared by twice as many students, who worked on each computer in pairs. In addition, one computer—the only one connected to the printer—was dedicated to instructor use, and the room monitor often occupied one of the seven computers for his own use. Students needing or wanting to download files for classroom assignments would typically have to bring a floppy disc (and by 2009, a flash drive) to print them later elsewhere. Students reported that there were other computer rooms with “working” computers in the building which they could access, but these machines were not connected to the internet, and were “old” and “full of viruses.” For a university at the “cutting edge of distance learning and cyberspace connectivity,” these student experiences seemed contradictory. Given these computer encounters at BNU, it seemed no wonder they preferred to access the internet on their own at nearby internet cafés, sometimes between and not infrequently during their required class times.

STUDENT GROUPS IN ACTION Earlier I considered Schlechty’s (1976) typology of student commitment (committed, calculative, and alienated) and his notion of how the school (or university) defines students (products, clients, or members). I suggested and have partially illustrated the fact that the student commitment “variable” in the Kyrgyz case must include the “collective.” And, I have suggested that Kyrgyz universities’ inherited definition of students as “products” is becoming problematic. The former Soviet university defined students mostly as products: those who would be allowed into the university would be taught the skills the state needed among teachers, nurses, engineers, etc. The state was very specific about the skills it wanted students to learn, and placed graduates in the specializations they trained for. Now, however, students are coming to believe that they are clients, since many of them pay for their own studies and choose from a host of new specializations that they believe have either personal interest or career possibilities. Since universities are very expensive now, alienated students ought to be minimal, since students pay a premium to acquire skills and knowledge related to their futures. In reality, the number of routine absences and missed classes suggests that while students may be on the class rosters, they are not much interested in daily lessons. Some remain on official lists, but are

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“alienated,” because they are now fully employed in Bishkek or out of the country, but they will receive a degree anyway since they are still paying fees. Some alienated students have transferred into one of the new “distance” education institutes of the university. Then there are students who tend to find their studies tedious and boring and rarely come to the university except for special events, to take endof-year exams, or to see friends. They would be defined by Schlechty as “calculating”. Finally, there are a handful of committed individuals who come every day to the university. Paradoxically, they either do not grasp much of the instructional material presented, or already know as much as their teachers. Occasionally there are star students who are able to (almost) become a member of the decision-making process of the university due to perceptions that they are both morally committed to the university and are recognized within their groups as leaders. In these cases, a student can move from being a product of the university to becoming an unpaid “member.” Such dynamics were quite visible among my student groups in 2008 and 2009. Little of this is officially acknowledged. On paper, every activity and every rule is highly prescribed and advertised for every student. Classroom attendance, for example, is mandatory, but no one in my groups was ever officially sanctioned for being absent. Attendance is nominally kept in every class via a journal compiled by the starosta (group leader), but how this record is interpreted and used is up to the instructor and administration. Now that students are paying for services, the journal appears kept only for official purposes or perhaps as a negotiating tool in borderline grading cases. In one FFL group, I was told the journal was not carefully kept anymore; in another the starosta just marked everyone present even if they were not there. Many teachers do not appear to object to such practice, although they keep their own records. I heard a variety of answers about why students came or did not come, and why they did or did not fully participate in class. Some first year students who rarely came to their classes did not come because their parents enrolled them at BNU against their wishes (see Chapter 2). These students in essence were biding their time until the subsequent year when they could transfer to another faculty or university, since they understood this to mean they would have to start all over again and repeat their first year. I tracked down several students who had transferred from one faculty to another or from one university to another during their studies, and some of their insights are provided in the next chapter. The bulk of students enrolled in the FFL might never get to every lecture or seminar where they were supposed to be during the day, but they were usually somewhere on campus, often in the non-classroom venues described earlier. Perceptions of teacher quality, interest in the given subject, and predictability (would the teacher actually be there today) were

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big factors in why and when they actually showed up at the right place at the (almost) right time. “Good” teachers were seen as those who had good command of their subjects, were nurturing (“understand us),” and “entertaining.” Students usually attributed good teaching to the more senior teachers in the FFL, arguing that many younger ones (often three or four years older than themselves) were not as well qualified, “experienced,” or motivating. Committed and calculative students (and sometimes alienated ones) would routinely come to a class where the teacher was “experienced” or was argued to be teaching important and new information, whereas the younger and less experienced teachers seemed to have more empty seats during the same day. Also, in various required English language classes (for example, grammar) the content was redundant to what they had studied in secondary school or in an earlier course. There were mixed feelings about instructors who taught required general subject courses: ecology, sociology, political science, Kyrgyz history, and informatics. Instructors of general studies courses were not part of the core faculty in the specialized subject areas of the FFL, and typically had few personal relationships with students. They were often criticized as either uncaring or “boring” or “too strict” by the less committed students, although sometimes praised by the more serious ones. Non-FFL faculty were criticized also for not being willing to negotiate assignments or test criteria in their classes and reported more reluctant to accept excuses for regular absences by FFL students. A big problem, as revealed by students in 2008, was the unpredictability of where and even if classes might happen on any given day or even week. Cell phones came in handy in such circumstances. For calculating students this was particularly important, since they could then rearrange their priority list for the day. For committed students, this was a bigger problem. When I was coming to campus in mid-morning, I could always tell if a popular class had been cancelled: the several students I generally expected to be in class would instead be outside. Most students did not mind a missing teacher or having their schedule rearranged occasionally. Few students ever complained that they had been looking forward to any particular lecture or seminar in their daily schedule that was cancelled due to a teacher’s absence, although if a favorite teacher had gone missing for a week, students sometimes complained that they missed her. The culture of learning at the FFL seemed flexible at best and dependent on the whims of administrators and the vagaries of teacher availability, no matter what the official learning plan for the day prescribed. Students rarely complained that since they were clients of the organization they had rights to learn particular things they needed. For the most part they just undertook what was presented and assumed that they were “receiving good knowledge,” as defined by the staff.

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What did upset many of my students was the routine absence of particular teachers over extended times with no replacement. One of my groups, for example, had four hours of English grammar scheduled every week with a teacher who was actually absent for the entire semester. This course was always listed on the official class schedule even though all students knew she would not be there. The missing teacher was a young instructor whom students liked for her patient ability to explain English grammar in a way they could understand. But, she had given birth in the autumn, and did not return to the university. Kyrgyz practice is to allow teachers to take sick leave or maternity leave for extended periods without pay upon a physician’s certification, and this maternity leave time also counts toward years of service required for teachers to retire and draw their pension. Students complained that no one substituted for her grammar class for an entire month, and they were getting restless. By late February, the leader of this student group went to the institute director to ask if I might be assigned to take over this three-hour weekly class, since I was often in the building anyway. But I had a time conflict that would only allow me to meet with them for two of the three scheduled hours. Furthermore, I do not teach English grammar; this would only be a conversation class. To complicate the situation, in the month of March there are several major national holidays that almost always involve canceling Friday classes for one reason or another. Two of the four Friday teaching days I agreed to meet did not happen as scheduled. To summarize, I taught a scheduled three hour class in two hours for much of a semester on a topic that was not the one approved by the ministry, which was attended by perhaps 60% of the students who were required to be there. No matter what a student might want to achieve in the English “grammar” course I taught in February and March, it was not grammar and met less than half of its scheduled time. Yet students got full credit for having taken this class. In my experience, this was not unusual, since in about 20% of the days when instruction was supposed to be happening, classes were not held at all.

MARKETING DEGREES TO STUDENTS AND THEIR PARENTS The FFL director and her superiors appeared to believe that for many students the specialization of “translator” might not be as attractive as newer topics related to regional studies. Kyrgyzstan understands itself as joining the world community; it has become typical for the government to express interest in other countries and in world events and controversies. Students and parents who might be considering a variety of international majors

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would want to come to a university where they could not only continue in language study many began in secondary school, but also branch out into topical areas related to their language. Obtaining two (or more) diplomas is also considered a good long-term employment and intellectual strategy. Many students interviewed during my fieldwork indicated that they planned to go on for another diploma in a related or even completely different field once they finished their current program at the FFL. The program director wisely anticipated this interest by including two of her three programs as four-year programs that would count toward the five year specialization also offered at her institute. The matter of years toward a degree illustrates an interesting situation where international and Kyrgyz norms collide. The Soviet-era specialist degree required five years of study. When Kyrgyz universities decided they wanted to join some diffuse international higher education community, it was noticed that the undergraduate degree (BA) in the West was usually a four-year program. As a result, in Kyrgyzstan, both the western-style BA (and the MA) degrees and the inherited five-year specializations can be found in universities wanting to join the international higher education space. At the FFL, International Journalism (IJ) and Western Studies (WS) are four-year baccalaureate programs, while Translation Studies (TS) is a five-year program. Students are promised that once they finish their four-year degree, they can go for one more year to obtain a second diploma in Translation Studies. The WS and IJ programs are also advertised as more intellectual, since much of TS specialization is focused on the minutia of problems in grammar, “stylistics,” “lexics,” etc., and related specializations in language are available in other universities. Recruiters for the FFL (who are typically instructors and prominent students) argue that studying English (or French or German) gets tiring after some time, and that the approved specialization in Translation Studies has little room for systematic teaching in the cultural and historical contexts of the language. Their argument is that IJ and AS programs are more useful for students hoping to travel and more socially interesting than just TS. And besides, most students coming to Bishkek looking to get a diploma in something English-related have already had up to six years of English in secondary school. The biggest draw to the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the Bishkek New University is that the Institute director has been able to find and bring foreign instructors and visitors in the city to teach or at least give guest lectures. University students from “the village” have had limited exposure to foreigners who speak the languages they are interested to learn. In 20062007, three other international visitors besides me appeared at the FFL, two Fulbright scholars studying university governance and corruption and an American Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). None of these visitors had pedagogical training in how to teach English or Journalism, although each

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could and did hold conversational English classes, and some taught on topics related to British and American Studies (politics, history, etc.). The PCV also brought high-quality instructional materials but which were not aligned with what was being taught by other language teachers. Another PCV was added to the FFL teaching roster in 2007–2008, but he transferred after a few weeks to alternative institution, dissatisfied with the lack of earnestness his students demonstrated in the political science course he had been asked to teach. Another American—a doctoral student studying how students were using the internet—briefly appeared and was available to teach English classes for several weeks. Finally, three young Christian missionaries were allowed to teach English conversation classes, discussion groups, and student activities on university property. Although these three individuals were even younger than many FFL teachers, they were seen as “interesting” and “fun.”

ANYTHING “INTERNATIONAL” Virtually all of the specializations and courses of study offered at BNU emphasize either international content or international connections. The university attempts to present itself to parents and students that as an international university, with programs and degrees that link students to the world, it is “internationally recognized.” Students are told that their degrees from Bishkek New University are recognized inside as well as outside of the country, which may or may not be true. While a large board in the main university building proclaims it to be a member of ten different international higher organizational organizations, and although it is true that some programs issue certificates of participation in internationally sponsored workshops and programs, there is no proof that any other university outside of the former Soviet Union recognizes BNU coursework as equivalent to their own. I heard of no student or former student who was able to use any “credit hours” accumulated there who was able to transfer to any international university. Several foreign universities have working relationships with BNU and co-sponsor seminars and workshops for its teachers and select students, but they do not provide coursework or direct connections to degree programs in their home countries or to careers overseas. The lone exception at the time of this writing was the medical training program done in conjunction with a university in South Asia. Yet completing the medical degree at BNU only allowed graduates to sit for the national exam at home. One veteran student in that program estimated the success rate on his country’s licensing exam among returned BNU graduates at only 10%.

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A government-approved diploma at any Kyrgyz university is necessary but not sufficient to enter the professional job market. Surely, many graduates find jobs in this market, but they do it via personal connections. The university does not post statistics related to employment of its graduates, nor does it publish if and how students who study in internationally related specializations fare on the foreign job market. Although BNU proclaims its international focus and competence, almost none of its teachers or administrators have credentials or diplomas from outside of the former Soviet Union, and only two or three out of 20 or so instructors on the FFL staff had ever traveled to the countries they taught courses about. By and large, all instructors were basically recently graduated bilingual/trilingual grammar or literature instructors. None had a degree in Journalism or in British, German, French, or American history, culture, politics, etc., although most had had exposure to such topics indirectly through Western novelists and poets. Neither did the FFL take advantage of those hundreds of South Asian English speaking students living on campus who could have served as resources to the university (beyond the tuitions they were paying). The international diversity that could be encouraged through strategic planning and curriculum alignment is lost, since these students are assigned to study in their own separate groups.

BAIT AND SWITCH No matter how the university and its institutes and faculties market themselves, the reality is far from what is promised, and it starts with the building itself. In my fieldwork I heard many concerns about the condition of classrooms and other physical facilities. Even though the main building is impressive and close to the presidential palace, FFL classrooms occupy the third floor of the less attractive once-dormitory that runs down a side street. And, there appears to have been very little remodeling or renovation of this facility since it was built. The stairways and hallways are narrow, stairs are crumbling and the handrails are broken in many places. Floors, too, are in need of significant repair on the wooden planking, old red tiles, and linoleum sheeting. Doors and windows hang loosely and crookedly on the interior and need repainting, and interior classroom walls are often stained and dirty. The lack of attention to building maintenance and repair could be because the university is trying to save money and cut corners. The university operating budget is a big mystery, and neither the students nor the staff understand and can explain how tuition dollars are exactly spent and why almost nothing is budgeted for materials or building improvements. Another likely issue in the dereliction of the university facilities is that it pays rent to the government to use what are theoretically public buildings

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and is charged not only by the size of the space, but partly by building condition. Were they to spend their own money to do more than emergency repair, they might also be charged more rent. Also, the government periodically grabs and reassigns institutional space in the country, as it did when it awarded the building to BNU in the 1990s. National political changes and government connections engenders any long-term agreements or contracts as essentially revocable. The BNU president seems to have decided that not investing in serious building renovation from the university operating budget is the thing to do. To at least address building appearance issues, however, the university administration supplies the FFL with buckets of whitewash and students are assigned to repaint the walls of their classrooms yearly. Such was the practice during the Soviet era when students were expected to do such work since it was for the common good (of the socialist state), but these days, when students are paying for their studies and there is less pretense of building anything here except private futures, the assumption that students should make their own repairs for the good of the university falls on mostly deaf ears. Just as is the building proper, the “apparatus” of the FFL is shockingly undercapitalized. Tables and chairs are holdovers from Soviet times, and are patched together occasionally by a maintenance man assigned to the building. Many chairs were without backs by year’s end when I was there, and the tables in most rooms had been painted several times to conceal graffiti and markings from a bygone era. Most of the old blackboards (actually brown) still hanging on the walls had lost their surface, and the chalk available to teachers crumbled in the would-be writer’s hand. The starosta of a student group I taught brought her own chalk to the class for the instructors to use, but even then what was written on the chalkboards was virtually illegible. In one room, a newer whiteboard could be found, but it had been supplied by the Peace Corps Volunteer who taught at the university. This was not necessarily helpful in the long term, since the university does not replace the colored markers needed to write on it; teachers have to supply all of their own teaching materials. Conspicuous by its absence is equipment that would be expected in foreign language teaching. Other universities (from which student samples for Chapter 2 were drawn) had at least some auditory listening laboratory with equipment, but not BNU. The language teachers I interviewed admitted that even during Soviet times, the university that taught English (30 years ago) had listening laboratories. But the BNU Faculty of Foreign Language had one old tape recorder that was swapped between classes when possible: This was for a faculty with about 350 students specializing in three different foreign languages. For about the price of one new computer (several of them to be seen in university administration offices), perhaps 10 new tape/

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CD players for instructional purposes could have been purchased. There was more audio technology in passing automobiles than there was for 350 language students in one of the major universities in Kyrgyzstan in 2009. The problem of auditory practice in foreign languages was compounded by the previously noted fact that the only native speakers of any of the languages being taught in the FFL were the several untrained international volunteers and scholars, and Kyrgyz instructors never lived or worked in the countries where the language they taught had been spoken. Rather exotic dialects of some of the faculty were offered-up as proper English, German, or French. If we assume that lack of recent language teaching and learning electronic technologies is permissible under the state standards, it seems obvious—to me at least—that the standard is decades out of date.

STUDENT GROUPS IN ACTION: THE CASE OF WESTERN STUDIES 2 (WS2) Eager to monopolize one of the few foreigners on campus, I was effectively adopted into a second-year FFL student group—which I abbreviate as WS2—in the spring of 2008. I spent approximately 3 days a week with this group in classes and social settings for almost six months between 2008 and 2009. WS2 had several personal favorites of the faculty of institute head, including the student president, Nurbeck, and the WS2 starosta, Kamin, who was Nurbeck’s good friend. Nurbeck had worked tirelessly at the university to recruit more students for the Faculty of Foreign Languages. He had a very engaging personality, his English was pretty good, he had two years of previous work experience in Russia which made him several years older than many of his group mates, and he was persistent in his seeking out of international visitors for conversation. Many students credited his recruitment efforts in previous summers to their applying to this university. Nurbeck and Kamin also convinced the FFL head that as a native English speaker I could be very useful in their group’s conversational English class. Therefore I was given a variety of teaching assignments in their group and lesser instructional duties in several others. WS2 was composed of 17 students when I met them, but not all of these 17 had been in the same group the year before. Two of them were ethnic Kazakhs; the rest were Kyrgyz. The year before (2006–2007), Western Studies had two entering groups of ten students each, but five of these students left the program within the year for other universities or different specializations. Several left WS because they had little interest in the field to begin with; their parents had “helped” them to initially choose this specialization. Kunduz was one of these students who transferred to AUCA, and her reasons for doing so are discussed in the next chapter. Meanwhile, two groups

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with fewer than 10 students were deemed not efficient, so the FFL head merged them into one by also adding two newcomers, both girls. These newcomers were automatically enrolled as second-year students because they were graduates of the private kollege of BNU. Being enrolled in this kind of college enables students to receive the government attestat for secondary school and immediately enter the second year of study at the host university. Parents who plan to send their children to a particular university like the idea of sending them to kollege since public schools are in decline and elite private schools are expensive anyway and do not guarantee university entrance, let alone without having to take entrance exams. Thus, the 15 remaining WS students from two previous first-year groups were increased by two new college students to then contain one secondyear group of 17—WS2. But in fact, the list of 17 students—three boys and 14 girls—was really only the official composition. Never in my experience were more than 14 students in attendance at any particular time and fewer than a dozen routinely came to classes. The three others were largely alienated from the collective—sort of “part-time participants.” Internal to the larger group were several sub-sets of friends who spent most of their free time together inside and outside of classes. Similar cohort patters and interactions were prevalent in the other groups I worked with. Overall, there were 11 student groups in three different specializations in four or five-year FFL courses of study. Attendance and participation of the 17 students varied widely. One student (Vera) appeared only twice during my three months of teaching and she spoke no English, which was the instructional language for my class and for most second-year coursework. Vera and two other girls in the group—Rahat and Jazira—formed a loose triad of outliers within the larger cohort. These two girls were in attendance about half of the time of my fieldwork. Sometimes they came to classes, but just as often could be found in the canteen or nearby cafés working on unrelated projects. To some extent, these non-curricular projects were more intellectually challenging than what was happening in FFL classes. One of the projects was underwritten by Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), an international organization which sponsors university teams to create or propose entrepreneurial projects both worldwide and in Kyrgyzstan (Kirmse, 2009; SIFE, 2009). Both girls had also been involved in other student youth-group activities and social causes with organizations like the Soros Foundation and UNICEF. But even though such volunteer participations were formally endorsed by FFL administrators, I knew of nobody else actively engaged in them. How Vera was connected to Rahat and Jazira was a mystery at first. She was at the other end of the participatory continuum and almost always missing. When she came she neither spoke nor understood most of class discussions, expecting one of her friends to translate for her. And two of

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the three times I had her in class, she got into verbal fisticuffs with other students and left the room. By the end of 2008, she had dropped out of BNU and left to another university. The connection between the triad versus the other 14 students in WS2 appears to have involved demography and social class. Rahat, Jazira, and Vera were all city girls from Bishkek or the surrounding northern Chui Oblast and their parents had higher education backgrounds. The rest of the students were “from the village,” and these social origins contributed to the unease with which they confronted one another. Rahat and Jazira found almost everyone else in the group boring, uninteresting, and uninterested in matters they considered of significance. The other girls in turn indicated their disdain (or envy) of Rahat and Jazira by criticizing or commenting upon how the “city” girls dressed more like mature women than the girls they were, wearing makeup and fancy clothes most of the time. Most of the students in the “group of 14” were from families who had recently migrated to Bishkek. Their parents had typically come to the city in search of better work opportunities for themselves and better education possibilities for their children. More than half of them lived in city microdistricts and commuted 20–30 minutes each way; several still commuted daily from further villages, and two lodged with relatives during the week and returned home to their village on weekends or long holidays. One even lived in neighboring Kazakhstan (where university study is much more expensive) and commuted several hours a day between countries to come to class. Four of the other 11 girls in WS2 were at the university sometimes, but various obligations and situations—jobs, boyfriends, or travel issues—interfered with their attendance. For them, studies and group participation seemed to be calculated on a daily or weekly basis. Meerim, from Kazakhstan, was always talking about transferring next year to another specialization in another university in her home country. She made the trip to Bishkek three or four days per week, but it was a long trip and when there were fewer classes, or the weather was bad, she often did not come, and she was never there on Saturday, which was scheduled as a half-day of study. Saturday classes were an interesting phenomenon at the FFL. One required “elective” course offered on Saturdays that every student was TOEFL—Test of English as a Foreign Language. This course taught students necessary language (and test-taking) skills to pass this internationally recognized standard test, required from foreign applicants by any Western university. It should have been important to those seeking careers involving English (that is, most students). But this was not the case. First, it was taught by a part-time instructor from South Asia who had an accent difficult for students to comprehend, and in general, students did not appreciate the idea of attending university on Saturday. The TOEFL course was offered

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for second-year students (over 100). The classroom assigned for it, though, could hold only 40, and it was never full. Like other universities, BNU was the site for members of the opposite sex to meet and spend time in each other’s company. Two girls in the WS2 group had by the second year developed serious romantic interests and had steady boyfriends. One girl’s boyfriend was older and employed, and marriage was part of the discussion in 2008. Another young woman (Aidai) also had a serious boyfriend and was even more tangential to the group. She had entered WS2 from the preparatory college, and her partial group participation was complicated by the fact that she worked evenings as a roulette dealer in a local casino. Her English was quite good, and she enjoyed being with her group mates, but her job and boyfriend kept her elsewhere most of the time. As it happened, working in a casino became a divisive issue for WS2. The belief was that only criminals frequented gaming establishments, and that these criminals were spending ill-gotten money from illegal drug and racketeering. To work in a casino was thus viewed as immoral. When Aidai aided and abetted another member of the group (Gulzat) in getting a job at the same casino, tensions arose among other girls. But both Aidai and Gulzat quit the casino by April, restoring a bit of group cohesion. Work occupied a good portion of Zara’s time, too. To me, she was initially a group member in name only: she did not come to class at all during the first month of my teaching. As I found out later, she was employed as a home cook by a member of a foreign embassy. Then she started coming to class about once a week, always eager to be involved. Zara rarely participated in group social life and could routinely disappear for two or three weeks at a time. She was busy, and she was providing money for her parents. Another sometime-participant in the group was a young woman from distant Naryn Oblast, Roza, whose verbal English was minimal and who was also frequently absent for long periods of time. Her elder sister had been a protégé of the FFL director and an accomplished student who had by 2009 left the country for Germany to work in a family’s household as au pair. Roza came to the university to follow in her sister’s footsteps, and also wanted to go abroad. Four AS2 were almost always in attendance. Two boys were group leaders—one the starosta of the group, the other, Nurbeck, leader for all seven of the second year student groups. They could miss particular classes because both of them were frequently asked to perform institute or university-wide administrative tasks or organize social events. Two girls were almost always in class, although neither of them was considered a leader. Ainagul was an ethnic Kazakh living alone in Bishkek and very committed to her studies. She was in daily contact with her mother in Kazakhstan via cell phone, and

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had many relatives living two hours away near the large and beautiful Lake Issyk-Kul (bordering Kazakhstan) on the Kyrgyz side. Another student, Ella, was from the town of Balykchy also on IssykKul, and she and her sister lived together in Bishkek, but studied at different universities. Nazgul was one of the committed students, although her language skills were intermediate at best. Her family had a home-based business making kuu-rut, a dried, salty dairy product which they then sold in local markets. Nazgul worked two or three days a week at home. Gulzada and Gulmira were key sources of information for much of my work. Gulmira attended classes only about half of the time and was rather outspoken and critical of some of her group-mates Her background made her somewhat unique, not because her family had moved to Bishkek from Osh in the south—which was not unusual—but because she was from my vantage point the only student from a “middle class” family. Except for the “triad” from Bishkek with professional family backgrounds, the bulk of my students came from either small villages or micro-districts where fathers were (taxi) drivers. Gulmira’s father, brothers, and male in-laws were all “New Kyrgyz,” who were importing building materials from Turkey and selling them in construction markets in Kyrgyzstan. The boom in residential and commercial construction in 2008 and 2009 meant that this family was doing comparatively well, and Gulmira’s substantial wardrobe and disposable income were obvious. Gulzada, Gulmira’s close friend, had a very different biography. Also from a small village to the south, she learned most of her foreign language skills from an international volunteer at her secondary school. She had probably been one of the students (mentioned in Chapter Two) who had been a victim (twice) of forced kidnapping from which she had been rescued by her father. This was unusual; many families will not encourage the rescue of or accept kidnapped daughters back home, because this will compromise their family reputation (Amsler and Kleinbach, 1999). Gulzada had no close relatives living in Bishkek. If she decided to come to the university, she had to commute 40 to 50 minutes each way, which cost about a dollar. Like Gulmira, she often complained about her studies, not because she did not appreciate them, but mostly because of missing teachers and cancelled classes when she was there. She was also less gregarious than many others, and had little interest in boys at the university, perhaps stemming from her earlier unfortunate experiences. While all but one of the 14 girls in WS2 lived either with parents or another relative, none of the male members was so encumbered. When asked how they spent their evenings and weekends, most girls would reply that they helped to clean and cook at home, watched television, and studied—often in that order. The male university experience was quite different. Nurbeck loved living “the student life” on his own in one apartment

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or another, even illegally taking up residency in a neighboring university’s dormitory. My visit to his dormitory in 2009 was like entering a 24/7 party zone, where boys and girls frequently intermingled without supervision at all hours of the evening and into the morning. Nurbeck had spent time in Russia and was used to living away from his parents who were from a village in the south. Even when they also moved to Bishkek to be closer to him and city life, he did not move back in with them. He was able to lead a few tourist groups in summer and scrape enough money together on the side to pay rent of about $50 per month to stay on his own; his two brothers working in construction in Russia often sent money home to their parents and to him to support his studies and lifestyle. Nurbeck and the other boys loved chasing “hot chicks,” as they were fond of saying, an expression learned from the young male foreigners they had come to know. Nurbeck in particular routinely stayed out all night with friends or at the internet café, emailing girls and his male acquaintances around the country and the world (at reduced prices). He organized group trips to dance halls and overnight travel to tourist destinations, although girls of WS2 only rarely participated in such events; most of them were under lock and key at home. Many of the “chicks” he spent time with after class and on weekends were from other universities. March 8 in the former Soviet republics is celebrated as International Women’s Day, and the understanding is that male students need to show appreciation to their female instructors and group-mates. On this occasion in 2008, the boys of WS2 bought flowers for them to show their respect and esteem; paying special attention to the girls they were flirting with or dating. Nurbeck, Kamin, and their friend Chico spent the evening before and the day of March 8 texting all the girls they knew. Showing me a sample of their letter, Nurbeck explained: I sent “Happy Women’s day, we wish you good health, beautiful life and strong love, be smart and happy forever. We love you just the way you are. Regards, Nurbeck, Kamin and Chico.” We sent this message to all our girls, and to others. All my messages were in English; I sent more than 60 messages to them and it took me one hour then I begin to receive messages from them; they were so happy. I sent half of them at night, since it is cheaper at night.

On another occasion I asked Nurbeck and Kamin to talk about other events the students did or celebrated as a group. Nurbeck replied that as a group, the mid-point (seredina), or as he called it, “the average,” it is important to celebrate, and they will do this in the coming summer: Usually we go to a special club, like disco club, like restaurants, or we have holidays. If we have enough money, we go together; and if somebody does not want to go, we will make them go, because all our group has to go. And sometimes we do, we make them go, and they are all happy afterwards. From

ON BEING A STUDENT AT BISHKEK NEW UNIVERSITY • 77 September we [have gone] to many places. Like [for] second year students: you see this is the “average” of our study; the middle. Usually Kyrgyz students celebrate “average of their study.” This time next summer we will do our average academic year. Yes, we plan to have [another] party then. We will organize it with our International Volunteer and [our girls]: 13 or 14 students [of 17] will come.

Chico was particularly good at languages, but also particularly good at not coming to the university. His mother worked as household help in Europe, occasionally sending him money to pay university tuition (which in 2008–2009 was approximately $450 per year), but he lived with his uncle’s family. His uncle was a wealthy cattle breeder in the mountains, but Chico complained of lack of financial support. Chico had several girlfriends over the years of my research, and was often talking about getting more serious with his studies. His favorite form of the English language was the idiom. He was very good at understanding the metaphorical twists of even the most complicated expression, which he would also enter into his cell phone memory for future use. Yet, Chico admitted he had a collection of “hooligan” friends; sometimes drank to excess and was usually out all night. When asked why he was often missing even from classes that most of the WS group enjoyed, he would just say that he had slept late. Kamin, the group starosta, actually had the tamest life among the boys in WS2. He and his brother and sister, all from a village in the south, lived together in the home of their uncle. But Kamin was the older of the children in the household and was responsible cooking and supervising his siblings as well as helping his uncle’s family with chores. Kamin’s participation in the university was subsidized by remittances from Russia, where other relatives worked in a family retail business and where his sister was sent in April of 2008. Importantly, Kamin found a part time job as a security guard for an internet café several nights a week. When Kamin had free time from his job and was able to shake free from his uncle’s apartment, he would join the other two for an evening out. His English was not the best, and like most others in his group, he had no particular focus in the Western Studies curriculum other than language, but he usually was at the university.

FFL, “WORK AND TRAVEL,” AND THE CLASH OF EDUCATIONAL MODELS A major excitement in individual student lives’ and much to talk about within second year groups at the FFL was a perceived opportunity to visit the United States. From February 2008 until the end of that academic year there was great hubbub involving the announcement of a US program called Summer Work and Travel (SWT). The SWT program allows univer-

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sity students form many countries to enter the US to work for up to three months in the service sector, and to travel for an additional month if they can afford it (US State Department, 2009). This program is highly advertised by many foreign travel agencies in Bishkek, and applications in Kyrgyzstan have grown exponentially. It is targeted at university students in local newspapers and campus displays; only second and third year university students are eligible. I was approached by more than a dozen FFL students asking about this program, which I had never heard of before. Student questions suggested various sorts of misinformation about the US (e.g., Is kidnapping common there? Does everyone own a gun? etc.). I did the best I could to clarify these issues, but needed to go to a travel agency myself to inquire about details of the program. Students that I worked with were recruited by one particular Turkish travel agency, which charged around $1000 to find and place them into summer jobs in the US. A student who would be successful in going to the states on SWT would thus have to pay the $1000 to the travel company, about $140 for a US visa, and about $1500 for a round-trip plane ticket. They were also advised to arrange (often on their own) accommodation in the US near their proposed work site, and to have at least $1000 upon stateside arrival, as they would not be paid for their work for several weeks after they had begun. Wages promised to students if they satisfied the requirements were to range from $7 to $9 per hour—as a waiter, busboy, or park attendant—with the possibility of overtime work hours or a second job. A quick calculation of costs versus benefits suggests that it would likely cost a student more to live in the US than they might be paid during their stay, once food and lodging were included. Most who wanted to go on this program thought they would earn some extra money to bring home, which none of them actually did. But, the chance to see America and improve their spoken English was a major incentive, and in student imaginations, $7 per hour was a huge amount of money, given that they knew their instructors earned $50–$100 per month. During the spring semester of 2008, five of my students (as well as numerous others) sojourned weekly from the university the two kilometers to the travel agency, where they were briefed about and completed the various required documents for program participation. Only the parents of one of these five students in my view could actually afford the costs of international travel. The others, had their children been able to leave the country, would have depended upon relatives working abroad to pool enough resources for the trip. The problem of course was that the Work and Travel program had detailed rules and prerequisites, and the travel company soliciting for students was only an agent and not the sponsoring organization, which most students did not understand. Neither could students rely on their

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university teachers or administrators to explain or negotiate the various bureaucratic forms and documents that needed to be completed, all inquiring about who they were, what were aims of their travel, where their parents lived, what types of jobs they had, and how much money the earned, etc. Since none of FFL students had ever traveled outside of the former USSR, they simultaneously had to also begin the process of obtaining their own international passports. It was in the details and documentation where many students fell prey to various sorts of “fine print.” In addition to money pressures, another sticking point was that although the travel company could advise applicants how to complete legal documents related to their employment and paperwork required to satisfy the US Embassy, students themselves had to deal with the US Embassy face-to-face to obtain J-1 visas. Obtaining a US J-1 visa to go on SWT required several sorts of evidence, and the students of course had to provide documentation to prove income, residency, and their status as students. For the US government, the main concerns were how an individual will financially support him/herself during a stay in the US, how the US government can be ascertained that the J-1 visa holder will return at the end of the travel period, and proof that the student who is traveling is actually a bona fide student in good standing at their institution. As it happened, all three of these issues were problematic for my students. The first issue was the least critical; the travel agency was working with a job placement firm stateside, and all students were able to produce a signed employment contract early in the process—even if they were not really sure what sort of job they were agreeing to undertake. What did it mean, for example, to “bus dishes” in a restaurant? If you were an amusement park “ride attendant,” what would you actually have to do? Or, what would it mean to pull a rickshaw through a park and sell ice cream? Guaranteeing that a student would return was more problematic, as every J-1 applicant had to demonstrate compelling family or school obligations that would impel them not to just disappear in the US and not return. Previously, in 2007, some students (from a different university) had actually failed to return after their SWT stint. Following this incident, students in 2008 had to provide promissory documents from their parents that they would pay a fine of $500 to the US government should their children fail to return home in August. None of the families of WS2 students would have an easy time paying this fine, so it was a serious consideration. But still, one of the two WS2 candidates who did eventually went to the US on SWT indeed did not return home. To this day, as can be surmised from his Facebook page, he works as an illegal alien in the hotel industry somewhere in Ohio or Illinois. His family paid the fine, and he is sending dollars home.

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To prove one’s status of being in good standing as a student turns out to be a challenge, as well. Three WS2 students fell victim to competing interpretations of what it means to be a “student” in the US versus what it means to be a “student” in a Kyrgyz university. The US Embassy received hundreds of J-1 visa seekers in April and May from Bishkek universities. The embassy perceived a problem with many of these applicants: how could students studying in state universities leave Kyrgyzstan in late May and early June for Summer Work and Travel when their studies did not formally end until late June or early July? In the American system, coursework is not completed and grades are not turned-in until the end of a term. In Kyrgyzstan, however, the formalities of class attendance and grades are just formalities, at least at the FFL. Instructors and senior administrators can give or change a grade almost at will, before or after the fact. The FFL head, as discussed before, believed that exposure to native English speakers and to American/ Western culture was a primary selling point of her program. She did not realize that the US Embassy might decline to recognize her students who wanted to travel as bona fide students. When three of the WS2 students presented their documents to the Embassy as part of the visa application process, their zachetnyye knizhky (grade-books) for the current term were blank; and the embassy ruled them ineligible for the program. The FFL director then wrote a letter of clarification, explaining that these students were in fact currently enrolled, and she also provided amended coursework grade-books showing perfect grades for classes not yet completed. This did not soothe US Embassy suspicions, and the students still did not obtain their visas.

FAST FORWARD TO 2009 By spring of 2009, WS2 had become WS3, and in their third year of studies, my students had finally finished most of the general studies requirements and began to more directly concentrate on their specializations. Most were happy about this; no more Politology, or Sociology, or Philosophy. Yet they continued to complain about their instruction as teachers continued to turn over during year three. A particular loss was that their favorite teacher and Kurator—who was confidant, advisor, and go-between with the administration and other instructors—had left mid-year to sell cosmetics in a local beauty shop. Although she loved English and translating Kyrgyz prose and poetry into English, she could not afford to be a teacher any more. If one assumes that finishing university academic studies was the intent of enrollment, WS3 had suffered a series of internal casualties. Aidai—who had previously worked in the casino—had apparently run afoul of her parents who disapproved of her boyfriend. So, they left to work in Russia. Yet,

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all current students at the FFL have their names with grades listed by group in the corridor of their classroom building; and Aidai’s name was still on this list. The tacit belief among students was that she would complete her studies one way or another, whether by paying bribes or independently working with teachers on the side. Roza, meanwhile, had gone home to the mountains for the summer (of 2008) and been kidnapped by a stranger, but in the end decided to stay with him. She signed up and paid for classes in absentia. Her group mates said at first her new husband’s family had agreed to let her finish her studies. But she never came back that year. Kamin did not return home after Work and Travel and became a fugitive in the US. His name disappeared from the list, but he allegedly transferred to one of the university’s distance learning institutes. Chico continued to surface at the university once or twice a week. But, he had a new girlfriend and both of them were having trouble paying tuition. His name remained on the list, but with several “Xs,” indicating he had failed those subject exams. Liza had joined the ranks of those paying tuition but almost never came to classes. She had found a good paying job at the nearby US Military air base selling locally produced souvenirs to soldiers stationed there. There were also some new foreign faces at the FFL in 2009. The youth ministry group mentioned previously increased in size and influence at the university in 2009. These fellows were given space in the university to hold conversational lessons and they even charged modest fees for their private English classes. They also participated in many social events of the BNU and came to several “talking clubs” in different city universities. Once or twice a week they invited students to their apartment to discuss morality and religion; they showed inspirational videos, and they persuaded some students to attend their local church services. In April, however, government officials came to the FFL to investigating if and how these missionaries were connected to the university, since large groups of students were allegedly congregating at their apartment on the weekends. The administration assured the investigators that if these missionaries were proselytizing, it was only on their time, not that of the university. There were also new developments on international education fronts. I heard less about Kyrgyzstan joining the Bologna Process this year. There were no visiting students or scholars from Europe or America that I could see, although the FFL was still trying to “write a project” to partner with a Swiss university for improving one of their specializations. Meanwhile, the Asian connection(s) were multiplying. The Chinese presence in Kyrgyzstan was growing rapidly, which makes good sense since these countries have a common border. The FFL created several new Chinese language first-year groups, and Chinese language classes now took place where during the previous year English groups had met. Universities of the country have begun to seek joint partnerships with Chinese universi-

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ties throughout Bishkek. The rector of the NationalUniversity got a jump on most of the others by signing a million (or more) dollar partnership agreement between his university and a Chinese university. This agreement provided for building remodeling, new equipment, technical assistance, and instructional support. Over the past five years, nearly 300 Confucius Institutes like the new one at KGNU have been established in 87 countries around the world; including Kyrgyzstan (USA Today, 2009). More visible around the center of the city and on the BNU campus were the legions of new Asian medical students. Their ranks have swelled to the point that they can no longer fit into the University dormitory and rent apartments all over the city. One of these students explained to me that academic recruiters have become popular in his home country, and parents of potential students sign contracts in Pakistan, India, and Malaysia, sometimes borrowing money to send their kids to study in Kyrgyzstan for a fraction of what private higher education costs in his home country. He claimed that firms are preying upon the hopes and dreams of families like his to send students to glamorous fields like medicine in former Soviet countries. But he was actually quite critical of the quality of the BNU medical training, saying that virtually none of the students he knew in Bishkek would ever pass licensure exams once they returned. Still, they were all having a nice time hanging out in Bishkek where the air was clean and expenses were more modest than at home.

CHAPTER 5

UNIVERSITY USE AND UNIVERSITY QUALITY THEN AND NOW

We are midway through this mostly ethnographic effort to investigate what it means to be a student in contemporary Kyrgyz universities, and how universities in the country have evolved since the Soviet era to accommodate (or exploit) demand for higher education. This effort has been accomplished so far by exploring the social and instructional world of students via surveys (Chapter 2), as well as by descriptions of the social scenes and contexts where students congregate at one particular state university (Chapters 3 and 4). How to speculate or interpret findings thus far? What exactly is a university in Kyrgyzstan in the early 21st century? How does it compare to what we know about Kyrgyz universities in Soviet times? Who are the students, how did they get to the universities, and how are things different now compared to before? We still have an incomplete picture of these matters, but we can raise additional questions and make some tentative conclusions. For example, if a university is construed primarily as a four or five-year intellectual academic Lost in Transition: Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic pages 83–101 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing 83 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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experience that depends upon a rigorous secondary education preparation and involves substantive and objective entrance examinations, then many state Kyrgyz universities are not such places. Many if not most of national secondary schools are of declining quality, particularly in rural places, but their graduates are able to enter national universities as “contract students” anyway, and their ability to pay tuition seems more important than their measured abilities or achievements. Meanwhile, if the purpose of the university is to educate, train, and assist in placing a new generation of experts into the professional labor market using best instructional practices administered by well-equipped experts, then again, many if not most Kyrgyz universities fall short of the mark. Investments in modern equipment and technologies are given great lipservice, but the students from several universities report a lack of useable infrastructure, particularly when compared to resources and equipment of private companies immediately surrounding the universities. Lacking public accountability measures, how state universities account for tuition dollars is not obvious or transparent. Neither do the staff who work in universities know how tuition dollars are spent. This income is not visible either in infrastructure costs or in the salaries for instructors. This means that state universities are increasingly staffed by new and inexperienced faculty with fewer advanced degrees. This is made all the more serious since many young instructors are teaching in fields they have little advanced training in and from textbooks that are old or inadequate. Alternatively, if the main purpose of the university is to hold and occupy secondary school graduates in the absence of careers and identifiable futures in the short term, then the data and descriptions reported so far suggests that universities discussed here are having some success. Or, if the Kyrgyz university is understood by parents as a place to demonstrate their parental commitment to children while also vicariously fulfilling their own desire for joining an intellectual elite that once existed during Soviet times, then this function may be being partially fulfilled. These are all possible interpretations of the data presented so far, and there could be others. Midway through this research, we are still seeking best ways to describe and summarize the university situation in Kyrgyzstan. Regardless of any other actual social or cultural purposes of the university here, we find a predictable effort made by those who operate the system as well as by universities themselves to portray themselves as inheritors of the previous high status Soviet model. The education ministry does in fact inspect university curricula and teacher qualifications often, yet these inspections of process rather than outcome rarely lead to significant curricular or staffing changes. Coupled with the changing demographic composition of who university students are and their declining academic qualifications since independence, these facts pose a serious challenge to

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any notion that current universities approximate those of an earlier time. Everyone recognizes that quality standards are compromised in the country; but these inspections of process rather than outcome rarely lead to significant curricular or staffing changes.

SURVEYING HIGHER EDUCATION VETERANS University rectors like the one at BNU, usually complain about lack of government resources and occasionally about what they consider to be excessive oversight and control by the education ministry. Senior faculty members, though, think the problem is much larger. They believe that the education ministry is too timid and has already allowed university rectors too much latitude with regard to standards. Such is my interpretation from responses to questions on university quality returned by eight senior faculty members at an academic conference in Bishkek in April of 2008 and interviews with several veteran instructors and administrators from two universities. The survey with ten open-ended questions was distributed to approximately 20 faculty members at an annual International Studies conference co-sponsored by various foreign agencies and several universities. Most of the eight anonymous -returned surveys came from senior instructors. Their answers provide some triangulation on views about Kyrgyz universities and the problems expressed by students, as well as a useful segue into the mentality of parents and the larger Kyrgyz society with regard to how they currently interpret the meaning of the university on matters of quality. Six of the eight respondents had survived the transition of state universities from Soviet times and had been teaching for more than 20 years, all had been schooled in the Soviet secondary education system, and all currently had either children or grandchildren in the universities. Since “to get good knowledge” was the number one answer of students as to why they enrolled in the university, according to student surveys, I anticipated that the quality of knowledge students hoped for would be referenced in faculty answers. However, few of the teachers perceived this an outcome of student experiences when asked: “since it is very difficult for a university graduate to find a job these days, why then do parents still pay a lot to send their children to the university anyway?” None of the instructors took issue with the statement that set up the question, but one of them did contradict that at least at her institution, connections between the world of work and the specializations taught were being made. The curriculum there, she wrote, “works toward needs of the labor market” and included “practical studies in accounting, management of tourism, and hospital services.” She did not mention if and how graduates were placed in jobs. She also added that at her university, the Quality

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Assurance Department monitored teacher performance, which to her was a positive thing. No one among the other seven respondents made similar statements either about quality or about real-world connections between education and careers. One instructor argued that the university was essentially a place to lodge young adolescents until they grew up. She said, “parents do not know what to do with their children after high school graduation. If they can afford it, they give their children a chance to mature [become older] at the university.” Another suggested that placing children in the university was primarily a matter of social status, and beyond getting them enrolled, parents paid little attention to what they were actually studying. For parents “that’s a question of prestige, and the more money you pay the more ‘cool’ you feel. It’s like, ‘my son is at AUCA.’ And what’s his faculty/department? [They] don’t know, but [they] pay.” More than one teacher claimed that the university was the site for “study,” which parents seemed to think was the absolute responsibility for them to provide. What the content of the study was and what it would lead to were of secondary importance. It was phrased this way: “It is one of the peculiarities of the Kyrgyz mentality; [parents] will sell their last [head of] cattle and give [the money] for the study of their children. To find a job is the next important question.” Three of the eight respondents hoped that in the future, the Kyrgyz economy would improve and better educated children trained now might find their studies useful, if only later. One said: “Parents want their children to be well-educated, and they hope that the Kyrgyz Republic will have a developed economy in the future [in order] for their kids to find better jobs and all.” And another argued, as did some students in the earlier survey, that Kyrgyzstan would see a brighter day down the road, that parents “believe in a better future of their country, [and this] will need knowledgeable, educated, and skilled people.”

THE PROBLEM WITH “RECEIVING GOOD KNOWLEDGE” If in fact enabling their children to enter the university is virtually an end in itself for many parents—if they do not really believe that what is being taught there will have immediate economic utility for their children—then the lack of attention to how students study and what they learn may become more understandable. Surveyed instructors were evenly split on another question I posed: “Do you think higher education today is more important in Kyrgyzstan than 20 years ago?” Four said “yes” and four said “no.” The four who said “no” elaborated that “university graduates cannot realize [attain] themselves as specialists in Kyrgyzstan today;” “higher education is the pleasure of the rich nowadays, [since] young people are fac-

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ing huge problems finding jobs according to their specialization[s];” “For many people it seems to be important, though many of them only need some certificates [rather than] education itself;” and ”we [only] need specialists or workers for light industry and agriculture to raise the economy [and] to open new factories and plants.” The four who said “yes” tended to insist that higher education was a universal good and in accordance with popular values, but only one suggested that what was being learned had direct contemporary utility. One claimed that “in my country people [have] always hoped for getting a good education.” Another agreed that obtaining a quality higher education remained important, but that lodging their son or daughter in a university was for the benefit of parents’ status rather than the knowledge children might acquire. She thought that the “mentality [of the Kyrgyz people] is that higher education is important, [but] sometimes it is to show their [parents] abilities, even if their son or daughter doesn’t know anything.” A related perception was that higher education provision was important because it was an indicator of the status of the county, mostly, since it would help to “develop our integration into world higher education.” The majority of instructors surveyed have at best a diffuse notion of reasons why students should attend, and the fact that none of the eight said that quality of knowledge was a goal of parents was interesting. That seemed in agreement with students surveyed earlier, that in the absence of other possibilities, their parents wanted them to study and get good knowledge. Instructors as well as many students also seemed to at least hope that one day what they were teaching and learning might have actual utility. Not one, however, claimed that quality instruction at the university was the reason students should attend. Conspicuous by their absence among either student or faculty responses were references to contemporary social or political problems in Kyrgyzstan that study might relate to, especially given the fact that respondents were from humanities areas. “How to join the world community;” or “rethinking what it means to be Kyrgyz;” or “how the university or university study relates to globalization” seem like topics worth pursuing academically and might be addressed in class by some instructors, but there was no mention of this in the survey. Given that instructional quality was intimated as marginal, students often enter without adequate secondary preparation, and the provision of academic resources are strained, it should come as no surprise that most surveyed instructors viewed with suspicion their current university “academic culture.” Two also laid the issue of university quality as the mismatch between opportunities and possibilities for students: “Students [do] get good knowledge, but they cannot use their knowledge in life.” Another thought

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that “most universities train highly qualified specialists, but we have some universities that can’t meet the requirements of a market economy.” There emerged a shared opinion that universities have academic quality problems, especially state universities. A 19-year veteran painfully admitted that “commercialization has spoiled the system, because universities, in order to survive, close their eyes on many things.” They apparently “close their eyes” to corruption and lack of student effort, two things which an instructor with 37 years of experience believed were connected: “There is more corruption than before, and students don’t want to work. There is no motivation.” Even an instructor with less than ten years in the university had noticed large declines in faculty quality as the number of universities has increased: “We have too many universities, but not so many specialists. People hire former students to teach English even if their major was economics. They are simply not prepared to teach.” Another, with 40 years of experience, agreed that faculty quality was a major problem, as well as teaching materials and resources: “[We have a] lack of highly qualified university instructors and poor work stations.” And a set of responses pointed out the larger endemic problems: Kyrgyzstan has lost teachers at secondary and higher education levels. A 42-year veteran said: “We are losing high quality educators and professionals in many fields. The lack of good teachers at high schools is really frightening.” Finally, from my perspective, the conference itself (where the survey was administered) revealed a diminished focus upon academic culture. This two-day conference should have drawn many FFL faculty, since its topics were directly related to their specializations, and it was held only a 15 minute walk from their university. However, except for the head of the FFL, who was among the organizers, none of the faculty came, and only several students arrived with me, and only because another foreign instructor let them out of his class and insisted that they should go. Instructors, particularly young instructors, had little time to spend and, unlike social events and celebrations, they were not given leave to attend these academic discussions. They were also not professionally motivated, since conference participation carried no weight in how they were evaluated or rewarded unless they were on the program (and none of them submitted a paper). Undergraduate students, as well, were not encouraged or given time to attend this annual conference, which, in my view, was very relevant for their international studies academic programs. They missed an opportunity to learn how to participate in lively and challenging academic discussions. My students sat quietly without comment. Lack of critical discussion among students at the international conference corroborated what I also experienced as a classroom instructor at the FFL—where students were rarely expected or encouraged to ask serious questions. Most of the teachers there and at

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other institutions I taught in seemed satisfied with the deferential authority relations alleged to exist at home, where young people are to be seen rather than heard. Academically engaging university environments in my experience expect or at least tolerate critical questions and conversations related to course content. But asking tough questions or about clarification of some academic point was rare among younger faculty or the few students I worked with in most “academic” environments in state universities.

THEN AND NOW: VIEWS OF TWO SENIOR UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS Two respected higher education veterans supplied extensive interviews about reform and change from the 1980s to 2008, when one was still a university administrator and the other left the system to work for an international organization. I had long-term professional relationships with both of them. Janat had attended the only Kyrgyz university (now Kyrgyz National University) in the 1970s,in one of the few foreign language programs then available. She was among the 10-15% of secondary school graduates continuing to the university in Soviet times. However, in her case, seven of her classmates advanced to the university and studied together in the same department and same group. They had attended an elite Bishkek school, and this school had “deeper” English learning (uglublennoye izucheniye). Janat reflected upon changes in university opportunities and the composition of the student body from her era: We entered, and all of us graduated together in five years; no one dropped out , and attendance was 100%; never missed classes; and, as I said, no one ever missed any classes, and of course, there were, half of them, were boring, like Marxism, or some other; but English was taught well. My English? I never met or spoke to any native speaker until probably after graduating from the university. It was tape-recorder; it was a local teacher. So our future was the best; it was teaching English; to be a teacher; a teacher at a school. To be a teacher at the university, [at that time], it was rare. There were not many places to be a teacher at the university. [Then] I graduated from the National University, and there was a job at the Woman’s Training Institute [now Arabayeva University]. And it was interesting for me, because it was a different type of the institute; it was state-funded and it was all female students from all parts of the republic. And the state paid for everything for them; for their clothing, for food, there was a stipend. And the aim was to prepare English language teachers for rural areas. And basically, by the 1980s, that problem was solved—there were enough teachers everywhere. And then after Perestroika, everything changed…

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Janat briefly welcomed early social and educational reforms: After independence—under the slogan of Perestroika—we “people” [laughingly] decided to enter the market economy, [and] we decided what type of institution [the university] should be. And the reforms which were started then were probably not well thought out. There was no principal strategic glance of how we were to transform [the] higher education of Soviet times; to move to a more liberal education. And every year the curriculum for higher education institutions was changing. And then a new minister would come and again something else was changing. [Before], all this stuff was coming from Moscow and all the basic documents [governing] schools and for higher education was coming from Moscow. [Meanwhile] here, the Minister of Education was responsible basically [only]for implementing. [S/he] had no designing or developing function. When we decide to be independent from Moscow, we [thought we] needed something new, something national. And then the problem arrived, because there were no people—no qualified professionally trained people—who could develop curricula at the national level and with high quality. And then what would happen is that we would again and again return back to Russian standards, to the Russian curriculum, trying to copy it. And then maybe we would introduce some [small] change.

Janat then turned to the issue of privatization of higher education alluded to in the earlier survey faculty responses. She, too, believed there were big problems, since the education ministry did not or could not provide oversight. And as she became an administrator in her university, these problems came to affect her daily life: … [and] then private institutions appeared; and, the Minister of Education at the beginning lost its controlling functions; then—maybe in 3-5 years—it regained [its authority] again. But the problems had started already, there was some ministry dysfunction and some universities refused [to be controlled]. Like, the International University of Kyrgyzstan started a credit hour system and something else, also AmericanUniversity of Kyrgyzstan [now AUCA]; they also introduced their own curriculum, their own type of education. At present, the Minister tries somehow to make all these universities meet some standards, but again there is freedom of the university, and there is the question of [how] private higher education institutions [should be monitored], how it should be done. What are the requirements, [and] what are the responsibilities of the privatized universities? A lot of questions have appeared…

Janat talked about the problem of creating new specializations and courses within the old university structures and of employing new young teachers, because only young instructors are interested in working for such small salaries. She described the situation of her university this way: In the beginning we had a highly centralized type of administration and management [and] the education ministry controlled our curriculum. After per-

UNIVERSITY USE AND UNIVERSITY QUALITY • 91 estroika we were allowed elective courses, and the ministry allowed us up to 20% [later 30%] to be defined by ourselves…Nowadays, the university itself can decide about elective courses, so it’s like 70% is a must something, like language, history—major disciplines in your specialization—but up to 30% is up to the university; they are free. But the problem is that the universities are not developing any new courses…You remember when we were trying to start an American Studies program, and the teachers [were asked] to work hard to develop a program. [Earlier], all the time teachers were saying, “Oh, we need freedom, we want to be able to have elective courses—like in the West”, but when it came to submitting [their] developed courses, it was a problem, because teachers did not know about resources or even the internet. And again, it is a time problem, and all these teachers should be interested somehow, and the administration of the university should be interested in real reforms [and] updating courses. But no one is interested; everyone says they are interested in reforms, but no one wants to do the work…

Although talk of reform and education reform were all the rage—during Perestroika and after independence—lots of it is talk with little action, according to Janat: Let’s take this credit hour system which we kept talking about for 10 years, no less! About the process and how to approach it. And “we have to join the international standards; we are to enter the world educational space, and ohohoh!” …But you know [these] need a huge amount of work at all levels, beginning from the Ministry [which should] develop the general curriculum or whatever; then the work of the Academy of Education, that [should be in charge of] publishing textbooks and to supply the libraries with educational materials, to train teachers, provide information technology for research, everything. If we want really to go to the world, we have to try to somehow to be competitive with other international universities and educational institutions… And what happens? All we have are old textbooks; and developing publications [or] teaching materials? No, each university basically survives by itself…Then they use students’ money. From the government, it’s nothing except for salary: No renovation, there is no money for books; there is no money for anything; no money for development—nothing: only salaries and building utility payments. And now, does our parliament listen to the universities? [Does] it support secondary schools? But of course not—someone else somewhere is more important?

Janat, like many Kyrgyz educators, bounced around to several different professional roles in her university in the constant process of its “reformation.” She survived early rounds of privatization and rector shuffling, but finally found a new professional home outside the university where she works just as hard but for a much better salary. Janat described how cronyism developed and expanded within the formal organization of her previous university, when an incoming rector usually replaced the academic “tribe”

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of his predecessor with his own. This dynamic only worsened as state universities were allowed to partially privatize: Under one rector, an institute was established, and a personal friend [of the rector] was named director. Then, another rector was nominated, and he wants to bring his people. The only way he can do this…is to reorganize [the institute]. And when you reorganize, there is a law that [only by] improving the concept of the institute is this possible. Like, an Institute of World languages [is created]: the same department changes its name to the Institute of Linguistics or Informatics, but otherwise nothing [except the director and his staff] changes. The same department; the same curriculum; the same teachers …

Janat agreed with almost everyone else discussed and quoted in this chapter that a huge problem for the universities and for the country is that national secondary schools are in serious decline and that young people have nowhere to go when they finish 11th grade. When she was a schoolgirl, she had some form of guaranteed future employment. But this is not the situation today. Where did young people go after secondary schooling during Soviet times? Many could attend vocational school and earn a decent living: In Soviet times, vocational schools were very functional because there was a demand at [for example] the Lenin plant, which was producing some military stuff; it was one of the biggest plants in Soviet times. And there was an agricultural plant; there were a few other very big and nice plants and factories in light industry—I mean, like a sewing and textile factory; and one for producing shoes…and for them the country needed specialists; and there were well-developed vocational schools. And it was really “if I get this training I go to work in this Lenin’s plant” or whatever plant; “I get a nice salary, I have a permanent job;” I mean basically, it worked for everyone…But then, after Perestroika, the plants were closed, everything was closed, nothing is working now. What is working is the Dordoi Bazaar, where all people are selling and buying something, but the country is not producing anything at the moment. For what did we need vocational schools? And that is why they are closed. But now the debate has started; “let’s start vocational schools again, we do not need that many institutes of higher education.”

But for now, vocational schools either closed or are unattractive to many parents who are unsure if they might lead to decent work and a “comfortable” life; so many parents turn to the university as their only option: The situation in the country is very paradoxical, if I can use that word…[Parents] have a very primitive idea of what to do. Your kid finishes high school, but there is no job for this kid. He is 17 or 18 years old and has no qualification and [there are] no [attractive] vocational schools. There are no places where your kid can work for maybe a couple of years before he is mature, so [parents] have to decide what to do and how to do it. Your kid cannot just

UNIVERSITY USE AND UNIVERSITY QUALITY • 93 travel, because you have no money just to have your kid explore the world. So, the easiest way is just enter the university, or the institute, with a hope that after he graduates from the university he will get a job somewhere, in the international organization or whatever. That is why it is a problem…Especially several years ago, the most popular departments were English language departments, because a lot of people were connecting their future with international organizations, or to get a scholarship or internship, but basically, we have no plants; we have no factories, we have no high technology; agriculture is basically at a low level. You do not need as many specialists in agriculture [anymore] either…And there are no real alternatives…except for education; our government does not offer anything except higher education institutions. Sure, tourism is taught at higher education institutions, but do we need students to study tourism for five years?…Some of my [graduated] students worked at the Hyatt hotel—in security or as a waitress with basic knowledge of English. And today, you need to study for that for five years?!

In another extended interview with a senior faculty member, senior university administrator, and nationally renowned scholar, I was able to pursue the question of differences between higher education in Soviet times and the current era. Kanikei commented on both the attributes of students then and now, and status and dilemmas facing instructors. When she was a student, she focused so extensively upon her studies that rarely did she have time to leave her classrooms or dormitory. The situation is far different now. On one hand, many students are currently distracted by other pursuits and believe they have time for them. On the other hand, there are many competing universities where they can enroll in or transfer to should they encounter academic troubles. Therefore Kanikei’s current position depends almost entirely on how successfully she recruits and retains students, and she has to accommodate several types: I genuinely think that we have [some] hard working students, but there are some lazy bones. You see, when everything depends on money—there are [now] seventeen institutes of foreign languages in Bishkek. They can go to another university who will adopt them. That is why we try to keep our own students and to do all our best to give them knowledge. But it depends on them, too, how the students will behave in classes. For example when I studied here—at the National University—for three years I did not go anywhere. I did not even know that there was a TSUM [the main shopping building in every major Soviet city]. I did not know what the TSUM was or where it was situated. I was busy with my studies all the time; you see. I knew the way to the library [near the Opera House] and to this university building; that’s it; I did not go anywhere…after the end of [the year], then I began to walk around [after] I passed my examinations. Two exams were in winter and four in summer. When I passed them with excellent marks, only then I began to study the city.

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Kanikei continued: Students are different now. The most demanding for us was “home reading,” [where] we read 100 pages of American and British writers and we were required to read these stories… And the process of retelling [these stories] gave a lot of knowledge. You realized where your mistakes are, and then the teacher will help you to find this and this. Yes, we were trained this way. And there was a laboratory in the main building; a very good language laboratory and we worked there till 11 o’clock at night. There was a special task for us [also] in the language laboratory. And you see a laboratory person [laborant] at the laboratory, signed that you sat there for a certain time—for three hours or for five hours, and next day we show[ed this] to the teacher—how many hours we spent at the lab. See, we did nothing but training tongues.

Language learning should be better now, according to Kanikei, since the world has opened up to allow foreigners in and Kyrgyz students out, both of which were almost impossible before. Still, many students are not taking advantage of that situation. Meanwhile, they do not spend dozens of hours weekly on their home tasks with dedicated instructors to correcting their work later in class, and there is no language laboratory for them either: [Language labs] were a great experience for the teachers [and] for the students. Now it is good we can go and we can talk to the people, we can communicate with different people who know English well, and we can visit them sometimes. But some [students] are just lazy bones…You see, we were hard working people at that time. But now young people do not want to work too hard. They demand to receive the results right now—without any hard work. This is the psychology of the students nowadays. And the other thing is there are so many opportunities for the students: they may go to take [outside] courses [kursy] or they may see videos. We just used books [and tapes] at the laboratories because [only] there were [any] recordings.

Kanikei recalled her financial situation as a student and reflected upon the lot of current instructors who live below the poverty line, and about how the “market” economy has changed relationships between students and instructors. Even though she was from a poor family, her stipend as a student was more than enough to live on, and she even managed to send money home to her parents: Relations between teachers and students are quite different now. The teachers are working in different places; they run from one university to another because of their salary, it is impossible. [In Soviet times], I received 55 rubles. It was the highest stipend for the moment; and that was enough for me, and I even sent something for my parents. [Sometimes] I bought them some clothes here, and I sent them money. See, I was full of money at that time. [Normal salaries] were 60 rubles, and the teacher at the university received 110 rubles, and my stipend was 55 rubles. As a student, that was enough mon-

UNIVERSITY USE AND UNIVERSITY QUALITY • 95 ey; more than enough money, because one kilo of meat was 1 ruble and 60 kopeks, which bought the best meat, and cabbage was 3 kopeks.

Given that new information and new specializations are one reason heard in explaining why universities now flourish in Kyrgyzstan, I wondered how different the curriculum might be compared to previously. I realized that Kanikei’s field of study (English) had not necessarily changed, but perhaps the mandatory state standards and teaching materials had improved. She had a mixed response to this question. She was actually unaware of state standards when she studied, because all she did was study, not ask questions. She did suggest that the organization of the curriculum is somewhat different; the sequence of subjects is different and a few new subjects are included. Again, though, she returned to her problem of having teachers with poor qualifications: I did not know the standards at that time, just we were given examinations. But those subjects that are now in the first and second course [years], political subjects—social philosophy or political economy—these subjects are in the fifth course [now]. In terms of English, though, for example, grammar, these are the same. Teachers were then really qualified. Before, we had two teachers from Japan, who had experience in translation [and] literature. One conducted American literature, the second was [in] methodology. They were very smart teachers; we enjoyed going to their lectures. And really all of the teachers who came from Russia—there were a lot of Russian teachers—were very qualified. And they worked hard for the students. Now, the teacher will run from one university to another in order to earn some money for the family, and they do not have time…for experienced teachers, no problem with designing their classes or something like that; but there are some young teachers… [for example] last year we had two young men; and it was impossible for them to survive on this salary here, and one of them now is selling meat at the bazaar; maybe he will earn more money. [Another former young teacher] works now in the Hyatt: I do not know what work; maybe as a waitress? And another one went to the Emirates.

Turning to the matter of placing graduates in professional positions, Kanikei acknowledged that there used to be a formal connection between the university and a graduate’s first job, but that this no longer exists. So, she urges her students to get involved with international organizations or private enterprises where they might use the language they are studying, even during the academic year. Of course, following upon this advice is one reason why some of the better students do not come to the university to nurture its academic culture; they are able to negotiate assignments and grades with instructors while actually working somewhere else. At best, students get mixed messages about the importance of academic study when they in essence learn that practical experience trumps study, especially

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when instructors’ qualifications are questionable, and they will be able to acquire a diploma anyway: Before, we had a special list from Ministry of Education, and your name is there, and it is written where you go to work for two years. It was compulsory, and your salary was there; the house was there, waiting for you. [And] your salary [as a rural teacher] was more than the usual one. There were [also] so many privileges for [rural] school teachers; there was [extra] money for Young Specialists—the beginners—so many privileges. And when I worked at school after graduation—in the village—I conducted a lot of classes because there was no teacher before me in the school, and I received a house and 400 rubles because [I taught] so many classes; you see. But now, we do not guarantee our students that we will find them a job. That is why we appreciate it when students work [often without pay] for international organizations. They work with their English specialty. We agree to that, and we allow them to work.

PARENTS’ AND TEACHERS’ VIEWS ON UNIVERSITY QUALITY Virtually all of the voices heard above were of university faculty with more advanced degrees whose social statuses have declined since national independence. General respect for the integrity of the university is down, just as the salaries of university instructors are. Meanwhile, citizens which had difficulty entering the university during Soviet times appeared to be less concerned about quality, and more interested in opportunity; the opportunity for their children to attend a university that they themselves did not have. And for some, this was the only useful short-term opportunity for their kids. We have already heard suggestions about this, but the following interviews collected from parents and teachers corroborate these points. Kunduz was a key source of information for this work whose voice is heard in several places. Originally from a village in the north, her parents encouraged her to leave for Bishkek and enter the university. Although she was herself quite accomplished upon arrival in the city, she now has to teach students, many of whom find themselves with few academic skills or motivation. She is thus well positioned to comment on the academic expectations—or lack thereof—that some well-meaning village parents have. Kunduz argued that the parents of many village students can come up with enough resources to place their children in the university. Repeating and oft-heard observation, she suggests that parents want to send their kids to school not because they have been great secondary school students and are ready to continue on to higher education, but because they cannot think of any other desirable alternative. They do not want their children to work in agriculture or in the bazaar. Kunduz’s parents had hopes for her that

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extended beyond staying in the countryside and getting married, so they helped her attend what used to be the national pedagogical university for women. According to her: Every parent wants their children to be happy and to live in good conditions, and that is why they send their children to the university. If they do not have enough money, they can send their children not to the university but to a college [technikum] or professional lyceum. And because they may find a job in the future, they can live independently. Because, you know, if you do not have a diploma or specialization, you can live [only] in the countryside or in the village, working with animals…In a village, there are no conditions; no internet, and the way of life is different from the city. In the village, you cannot have any progress in your career, you know, but in the city, there are a lot of chances to be progressive…If I were in the village, by this time, I would be married, and maybe have several children. I know some young women who are my age; they have already two or three children, and they live in villages, and you know their mentality is very different. They think [only] about their family, and not about their future. They think [only] about their children and what will happen tomorrow.

A parent and secondary school teacher interviewed for this project explained to me in a different context that higher education was an almost universal goal of Kyrgyz parents, even if many who lived in the village and did not themselves attend a university, and were not exactly sure what went on there. She said that at her school most parents hoped and tried to have their children enter one of the nearby city universities. This was especially important in their eyes since the disintegration of rural life was leading to increased alcohol abuse, crime, and hooliganism. Especially in rural places, “parents’ concern is to keep their kids busy, even if they are not certain about the future jobs [their children might find]. If their kids just study at the university for five years, they think they will be busy, and so they won’t be in trouble.” Eliza, an instructor new to Bishkek and the university and with children of her own, who had experienced three different universities in her academic career, took these arguments a step further, explaining (as Janat did earlier) that sending children to the university was seen as a moral duty by parents, even if they understood the university was no longer the same as it had been before; and even if the type of students who now “study” has drastically changed: Sending children to the university is a family thing. It is interesting, since only 13% or 15% of [school graduates] used to attend …Now it is true that parents consider that it is their holy duty [to send them]; if they do not give them education or provide them education, they think themselves guilty. And therefore, they make their children to study, even though they are not capable to study; if they are not interested…Before, university students were

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very intellectual, and it appeared in everybody’s mind, “Oh, he is a university student.” Of course, then there was only one university, and everybody could say [a graduate] was a highly educated, well-educated [person]. He was very literate and highly qualified. I do not know, at present—so many universities! But then, you can find students who cannot write correctly and the university lost its quality. When our parents studied—even if not at the universities, at technical schools—they were literate! They were very good at writing official documents, at speaking, behaved well and knew how to speak [or] how to make a presentation in public. At present, there is no change, no difference between the man who is working in the market and the one who is coming from the university—there is no difference!!!

Another issue, according to her, is that the “pipeline” from secondary education to higher education has been distorted by parent involvement in the process and more opportunities to choose from, even if children disagree with parental choices: Yes, they will make them go to have that education. So many students told me that we wanted to be doctors, but “our parents made us to study in foreign languages.” Other students said they wanted to be lawyers, but their mother and father made them to study foreign languages. [I heard] so many regrets among them…

YOUNG PEOPLE IN A “HOLDING PATTERN?” A young university administrator who volunteered as a part time instructor had his own interpretation about why parents, in particular rural parents, were so focused upon getting their children into a city university in Bishkek regardless of their alleged marginal quality and corruption. Bakyt said: So the thing is, [higher] education has [become] a priority for each family… those parents who might have been working [themselves] after high school, now they know that they can send their son to [the] university… It is probably [a] true thing that the university—that they really don’t expect from their kids [some academic] tradition, but they do expect that their children will learn some specialty so they can live with that major, with that background [of] education for their entire life. The education gives stable income; stable psychology. So, if you have stability, it’s a huge thing. [Parents] are much more concerned about that; and when they send their kids to university, they know the situation with the university: Its high corruption and then the poor quality of the university. That may be, but still the parents believe, or tend to think that at the university, the kids learn something that will help in their future lives and plus while they are getting a major at least they can figure out what their interests are.

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Bakyt argued further that, for some parents, sending even a child (usually a boy) who performed poorly in secondary school was an observed strategy, because while they were attending university, they might finally mature and become better people: Yes, because there are some changes when you send your son to [the university] who was doing bad in high school, but they [might] really succeed at the university…sending a kid for four or five years to university, I think, at least will make them students; to think about their lives in the future. Parents want to push students to think what they want from this life; their current expectations, and their general view of life. I can compare [Kyrgyzstan] with Tajikistan. Tajikistan went through a civil war, and the schools were destroyed. Kids did not go to school. Now those young people are the same age as me.

Although Bakyt believed that families should send all their children to university if they are financially able, some parents argued that only those who “studied well” in secondary schools should have this privilege. This came from a long interview I had with the parents of Nurbeck, one of the acknowledged best students in the FFL. For Nurbeck’s father, who did virtually all of the talking when he and his wife were interviewed, the promise of a university education for children was almost inconceivable for people like them during the Soviet power. He complained that then universities had pre-determined limitations on enrollment. Thankfully, he suggested, this was no longer the case, and more people had opportunities. Nurbeck’s father was also most appreciative of the possibility of geographic mobility, within Kyrgyzstan and between countries. He didn’t like that in Soviet times he was tied to his village and those who used to live in the countryside couldn’t leave it. Now, rural Kyrgyz are free to move to the city, and to live in other countries in the former USSR, Europe and overseas. He and his wife had moved to Bishkek from the south, looking for better work opportunities, and his several sons had left for Russia to work in well-paying construction jobs. He viewed the university as an opportunity for Nurbeck to be exposed to foreigners and perhaps to travel, even if it was now expensive. But in any event, for him, the entrepreneurial opportunities of mobility were crucial. Even as a driver of a bus or marshrutka, he was freer and wealthier, and more optimistic than he had been in the village: In the Soviet Union, there were few universities; and there were also colleges [tekinumy], and they only took a predetermined or assigned number of students. But now higher education is getting better, now we are on top of good education, now it is better than before…In the Soviet Union there was free education, but [people] earned only a little salary and they did not have a chance to make their own business. Now we can make any business we like. Before, if you earned much money and wanted to buy a fancy car or anything

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else, the police would come and ask “where did you earn that kind of money?” since you had only limited salary. When we got married, we worked for seventy rubles salary, and we had cattle. But we were limited to one little cow and three sheep. And if that cow gave birth, they would take the calf away; because we could keep only one. We could not buy a car; we could not even have any land, because it all belonged to the government.

At this point Nurbeck interjected that his family was saving for his education, and his brother was working in Russia and contributing to his university studies. I did not ask his parents if they had any idea about the very social nature of his “studies” as suggested in the previous chapters. But I did ask about what particular skills his parents hoped he was learning at BNU, and about why they chose that university. Apparently the BNU marketing strategy was on target. At this point, Nurbeck’s father switched from Russian to Kyrgyz, and Nurbeck had to perform the translation from Kyrgyz into English: I sent my son to the university to have education, higher education and to see other countries, to learn other cultures, and also to know the world and [about] new technologies. He [chose] BNU because he’ll [be able to go] to other countries. The other universities here are just state universities; you cannot go to other countries [from] these state universities. My mom is also saying she is happy because her son studies; she has good sons, and her son meets with foreigners at BNU.

Nurbeck then went on to personally add: They are happy with my study, [but] they say no wedding before I finish university. And they do not disturb my time during my classes; they even never call me until after my classes finish…because they want me to study, not to be disturbed. My mother says [in the old period] they used to study, but now life and everything has changed. They know I am interested in the U.S., but she says that they do not understand about the U.S.…They want me to get good science about the world, science work, like writing a book. But, [my mother] said “that’s up to you.”

Nurbeck was one of three sons in the family, and the pressure was not upon him to return to take care of his parents in their old age, which is the Kyrgyz tradition. But, even if he were, he thought, he would have been encouraged by his parents to go to the university and travel since he showed more interest and ability in his schoolwork than either of his brothers. His father specifically complained about the families like Bakyt described who sent undeserving children to the university: Some of parents, they [send] their son to the university, even if they know that they cannot study; they haven’t done well in their [earlier] studies. They want to get them diplomas, but they cannot study. Some of the [parents] they give

UNIVERSITY USE AND UNIVERSITY QUALITY • 101 money for diplomas; we know some [of these parents]. Parents should [actually] see how [their children] studied at [secondary] school, and the child’s ability…I cannot see the students who buy a diploma for money [ending] in a good place. They should never work as a leader or be in politics. They won’t be good persons for our Kyrgyz future.

I concluded my family interview with Nurbeck and his parents regarding the university and program he was attending and they were spending money on. Parents complained that the teaching cadre was too young and inexperienced (although they had not actually been to visit the university to see any faculty), and that there were lots of students in the university whose parents entered them into there without evidence of academic ability or personal commitment to study. Surely, the father opined, they will never become good professionals in things they are not interested in. He also thought that much more practical experience should be allowed in the programs to give students real world exposure, like exposure to foreigners. Nurbeck’s mother, at this point, interjected that Nurbek’s university experience was well worth the money they were paying because he had received an opportunity to meet and interact with U.S. citizens like me. Nurbeck translated his mother’s Kyrgyz for me in third person: She is excited now, and she is happy by meeting you, and sitting together at the table. She says we are sharing the same sky all over the world, and the same God, and we should connect, we should have good relationships with each other. She is also saying thank you for coming and for helping me, for teaching me English. They knew about you, and I always say I will go to (see) Alan to practice my language.

Students in the Mirror; IUK

Dormitory Life Outside of the National University

CHAPTER 6

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ACADEMIC CULTURE COMPROMISED

Surveys and interviews with university instructors, parents, and school teachers in the preceding chapter revealed notions of university functioning and university culture in general. We turn now to perceptions of students and faculty at one particular university and particular program—Bishkek New University’s Faculty of Foreign Languages. There, as scenes and settings of daily university life described in Chapters 3 and 4 imply, matters of academic quality frequently seemed of secondary importance. Eleven student groups were studying in one of three specializations of the FFL in 2008 and 2009: World Journalism, Translation Studies, and Western Studies. Each of these curricular areas represents variations of English language study, with additional focus upon a second foreign language (French and German), and more recently, Chinese. Most of the 24 instructors listed on the FFL website are basically specialists in English, and recently graduated from English language five-year programs. Although most of them have had practical experience and have acquired basic techniques in translating Lost in Transition: Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic pages 103–139 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing 103 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Kyrgyz or Russian texts or speeches into English and some have certificates from workshops provided by foreigners in how to better teach English, virtually none has a terminal degree even in English, let alone advanced training or degrees in World Journalism or substantive fields of Western Studies (studies in Western history, politics, religion, and economics). Higher education language faculties during Soviet times were multigenerational and included many senior faculty with advanced professional qualifications, albeit it fewer than in more academic specializations. Language instructors were rarely academicians/researchers pursuing academic linguistic study, but were rather pedagogues with practical teaching (school or university) experience, and possibly Candidates of Science (Kandidaty Nauk) in Pedagogy. This made good sense then, since the institutions they worked for were pedagogical institutions and the students they taught were would-be foreign language school teachers. Now, when the official goal or mission of foreign languages programs is “translation”—and everything surrounding it—the previous learning structure and organizational model does not work. To complicate matters, the academic culture of the FFL and places like it are bereft of seasoned practitioners and the holders of advanced degrees. In Soviet times the status and pay of university faculty was enough to retain them in the university for decades. Now, the instructor turnover is extremely high. The preponderance of today’s FFL faculty is young—more than half are younger than 25, inexperienced, and without advanced degrees—and depending upon how one counts, only three or four could be considered to be pursuing scholarly research. Thus they are non-academic, and in any event, have very little time today to gain an advanced degree or perform advanced academic study. So, the “academic culture” of the FFL is almost non-existent compared to what it might have been before, and virtually none of the instructors there today have ever even experienced one. Most students at the FFL and their parents likewise have little idea of the academic quality of the program or faculty. The university markets its specializations by highlighting the number of academicians from Soviet times that students rarely actually encounter. Students in foreign language areas mostly see young instructors, only several years older than them and with same degrees they are to receive at graduation (specialist or master’s). The education ministry certifies programs and since the education ministry has always certified programs, most parents and students assume that this is enough to guarantee quality. As for students, indicators of quality often concern more basic matters.

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ACADEMIC CULTURE AS SEEN FROM THE BENCH On a warm and sunny day, an excellent place to find FFL students is outside of the old building where they undertake instruction. I had many conversations like the one below, this time with three first year students several hundred meters away from BNU in late March 2008. My interview began with discussion about who was in their group, who was the leader, and why they were here outside of the university rather than in classes or working on assignments. All three of these young women were in Western Studies. One of them, Gulshat, was indeed a leader—starosta, an administrative position she said she loved. As group starosta, she was responsible for keeping daily attendance records for each student in every subject. She and her friends, though, had trouble enumerating the number of girls and boys in the group. They finally agreed that there were 16 students: 11 girls and 5 boys. Gulshat said that rarely did more than 12 students actually come to class, and that the normal attendance was about 10. So, I asked why the other five or six students did not attend, to which she responded: “I always ask [other] students why they don’t want to come here, and some students have work, and today our teacher was ill…yesterday, two teachers were ill, [but] today, nobody was.” Then the conversation turned to what students did when their teachers did not come. Did they take advantage of the free time to complete assignments or do some extra reading or go to the library? In my judgment, these would be good proxies for a strong academic culture. But no, Gulshat replied that when there were no classes “we walk on the street, or go home, and that is why students are free usually, since they don’t want to come back here.” She thus underscored the observations from Chapter 3 that coming to class was always an “iffy” proposition, since often one or more teachers did not show up and students would not usually know about this until after they had arrived at university. Gulshat also said that students in her group rarely used any of the study spaces here. I argued in Chapter 2 that most students say they came to the university to “receive good knowledge,” but students believed it is the teacher who is responsible for giving them knowledge, and when teachers did not come, they could receive no knowledge. The development of independent study skills was very rarely mentioned to me as an important component of university life. A problem for Gulshat and her group-mates was that teachers who came were often “boring.” And this assessment is coming from the leader of the group, who is supposed to be a role model and an intermediary between the other students and the school administration. Gulshat rather loved to use the word “free” when it came to describing the benefits of coming to the university. When teachers actually came to class, she and her groupmates were often “bored;” when they did not come, students were “free.” I

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asked her what she meant when she said this, to which she replied: “we do different things…like for example, walk and talk with friends or watch TV.” At this point, her group-mate Nurzat chimed in that she sometimes went to a (disco) club during the day, or spent time in the canteen; less often in the library, in addition to more typically hanging out on the beach with friends. For her, Nurzat suggested that a big problem was that she really wanted to study at Ataturk-Alatoo University (IAAU) rather than BNU, because that is where her friends had gone; and that place was “good, and clean…and everything is for students…[here] it is awful and dirty; and I just want to study there.” Her father, though, in conversation with the FFL head had been convinced that his daughter should come to BNU because she would get three diplomas. None of the three group-mates in the discussion actually had thought about future careers, so their parents had all made the strategic decisions about where and what to study. I did not understand how attending the FFL could lead to three diplomas, but was told that one diploma would be a four year degree (in Western Studies); another if they persisted for an additional year (Specialist Degree in Translation Studies); and a third “International” diploma. Actually, this “third diploma” is not an additional diploma, but a form used as a supplemental transcript to list subjects studied and credits and grades awarded in a format comparable with a Western university. So, it is still a BNU diploma only translated into English: and this form costs another $25. The three girls in my discussion did not know any details about this. The third girl in the conversation studied at the FFL because according to her understanding other areas of her interest were over-subscribed and graduates of programs like law, business, and management were as often as not working in either the bazaar or in a supermarket rather than in their specialization. She went into Western Studies since for her this meant a concentration in English, which she hoped would allow her to go abroad. She admitted to have only heard that other universities like Ataturk-Alatoo were clean and the AUCA was expensive; she had no real experiences with either. Here, she argued, learning English was more interesting since the better known language programs (at National and Arabaev) did not have as many foreigners for students to talk with. By now a fourth student and group-mate had joined the conversation. Frankly, Ailazat said, she was at the university and in her group only as a result of her father’s wishes. Her sister had urged her to go to another university, and was still encouraging her to change universities and programs. By now, she herself was unhappy with being at the FFL, in a university she had never seen before. She wanted to be a clothes designer, which her father did not approve of, and she kept coming to the university: “I am used to coming; I must come, because my parents say I must. It’s my religion: I must obey my parents.” With that, the four girls all stood up from their

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bench and proceeded down the promenade and away from BNU. It was still late morning.

NEGOTIATING ACADEMICS WHILE “LIVING THE [MALE] STUDENT LIFE” I described the carefree life of the three boys in WS2 in Chapter 3 and 4, but a few details of their use/misuse of the concept of “study” here might further illustrate their ideas of what the university is for. One of them was the FFL star student, its chief student recruiter, and activities organizer. Nurbeck was usually at the center of any social activity at the FFL, and social activities are high on the list of desired undertakings. The university mission statement, to be sure, advertises that higher education at university does involve attention to student social and cultural spheres. This was an aim of all universities during Soviet times, when vospitaniye, or “upbringing,” was incorporated into the everyday life at educational institutions at all levels. With the demise of the goal of building world socialism, though, the socialist upbringing has ended, and the moral dimension now focuses upon Kyrgyzstani identity; but there are fewer resources, and students are much less motivated to participate in activities orchestrated from the top. Nurbeck voluntarily played lead roles in the social life of both his faculty and the larger university. He was involved in student produced plays; coordinated student parties at holidays; and was a leader in KVN (Klub Vesyolyh I Nahodchivyh) university team, which he described as a “comedy club.” His buddy Kamin, meanwhile, was the WS2 starosta and also quite sociable, although not as outgoing as Nurbeck. Both were considered strong students at the FFL, even though Kamin in particular had failed several of his classes and needed to retake exams annually. For both of these boys, using the university as a springboard to go abroad was high priority, and one of them did just that before he finished his second year of study. Remembering that this WS2 group was formed upon the demise of two WS1 groups the year before, I wondered what had happened to those students who left and assumed it must have involved academics. But this turned out not to be the case: seven students had disappeared from both groups and three new ones from the preparatory college had been added to make WS2. According to Nurbeck, two students changed universities, three apparently could no longer financially afford to attend, one did not return from Kazakhstan, and one no one knew about. Among those remaining on the official list, three or four were still officially on track to graduate, but came infrequently to class, according to Nurbeck. He described these four as “lazy,” and not even understanding English, which was their major and

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their language of instruction. I wondered how such students would be able to graduate, and he was unsure as well: I think, maybe they will be kicked out; because we had one other Kazakh girl. She was kicked out from the university because she did not come; they were right, and she will be [probably be] kicked out. She will be given a month or two weeks to pass the exams, and if she doesn’t, she will be kicked out… Usually, you know students are not the same. Some of them can… they try to learn, or do something; do their best. Some of them, they do not care, they are lazy, maybe. They do not study.

I pressed this issue and asked why parents sent students to the university if they are not going to study when it is so expensive. Nurbeck thought that is: Because parents do not know about [their children’s] behavior. If they knew, they could say that they won’t pay, you see. I think [in these cases] they do not know because most of our girls’ parents are from the village, they do not know. They [probably think], “oh, my girl, she is doing well”, and they will send money; but their daughters do not care about them… that is why…

As for Nurbeck, his good work ethic and previous secondary school accomplishments made him more trustworthy, compared to many other students: Yes, I think my parents [trust me], even if they do not know my behavior and what I do. Sometimes I won’t tell if I miss classes [or if] I am working. But they will believe in me, because they know me from [my performance in secondary] school; they say that “you can do what you want, anything that you want.” They do not say, “you have to do this or, or this one.” They do not tell me to do anything; they even do not know my apartment [where I live].

Nurbeck’s friend Kamin likewise claimed that he was given great autonomy at the university based upon his previous mature performance in secondary school. His parents only requested to see his marks in his zachetka (a permanent grade book that students have to present to confirm their status) at the end of each semester. As a first year university student, Kamin appeared to rest on the laurels of his secondary school performance and underperformed at university. This was all going to change, he argued, because he had just been elected as starosta of his group, and he thought this would improve his motivation: Yes, I show it [the zachetka] to my parents, and my parents look and say: “all your marks are ‘threes’, why not ‘fours;’ why not ‘fives?’” And I said, “as a student, I study not for marks; but now I am going to study very well; now I am a group leader.”

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Most of the students in the FFL were there to enjoy the social life; others also hoped to go abroad and to work using the language proficiencies they might acquire there. However, most of those that I interviewed were upset that they had to study subjects not in their major and not taught by their own faculty. Even though Nurbeck and his friend Kamin were believed to be of good character and studied hard—as they understood the term—they still had issues with many of the academic protocols and expectations of the university. Kamin acknowledged that he sometimes failed course examinations, and needed to retake them. At this point Nurbeck broke into the conversation to defend his friend’s integrity, asserting that most students in their group and others at FFL had a common problem: The curse of general university requirements: One exam [none of us] passed yet, because that subject is a global problem for foreign [language] students—politologiya [political science] and sociologiya [sociology]. Usually we spend most of our time learning English, you know, even sometime, we do not have to study other subjects—[but] these need too much time to study. [In] sociology they gave us 10 or 15 pages to retell, and [it is too much]. That is why we cannot do this. That is why we got that failing mark in sociology, because it is foreign for us…Why should we spend much time with sociology? Why not English, you see? It was a problem. We told [our dean] that we do not want to study that one because we are not going to be sociologists, you see, this is a real problem. [But] she said that this is the rule of the [education ministry].

Nurbeck continued, saying that most of the students in their group did well in English classes but poorly in those courses outside of their faculty. Nevertheless, for those who had received poor marks in general studies courses of the second year, things could be rectified later: I think that within the academic year or in the fourth course [the senior year], we will re-pass [retake] the exam. Yeah, because all of our English exams are “fives”—TOEFL [class] or grammar—but for history, sociology and politologiya, “three.” Even we did not pass yet polotologiya; because we have tried four or five times. We have not [retaken] it again yet, because [when we try], teachers [say] “go away; go away.” … The teachers [of political science and sociology] they are—not crazy—but psihology. Those teachers work in the main building—for all students. And all students have these stupid lessons. They [the teachers] are not from our faculty. [We] have to study law, for example and sociology, but they need for us to be like them. We tried as hard as we can; we spent more time and many nights, but we could not [get it].

The challenges of general university study requirements did not threaten Nurbeck’s university status too much. His position in the university hierarchy was based more upon his charisma and organizational and language

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skills than upon his academic endeavors. And his passion in living “the student life” only increased in the third year of “study,” for at this point he had illegally moved into a dormitory of another university where about 80% of the residents of his new living quarters were young women—mostly from the village. All four of his roommates had their girlfriends in the hostel, and Nurbeck had a serious “flame” as well. Nurbeck’s lament about how hard it was to be able to pass exams in core curricular subjects juxtaposes several contradictions regarding academic culture and mixed understanding of “the academic” and “the social” in many universities worldwide, and in Kyrgyz state universities in particular. Nurbeck and his mates wanted the prestige accorded to those who were admitted to the university, when higher education was elite and “gave good knowledge.” Meanwhile, as tuition paying clients of the university, they were opposed to the idea that to study at the university meant that they might have to study something other than what they were interested in. As clients, they even thought they could negotiate with the FFL head to get a better deal in what subjects to study. And for Nurbeck and his fellow students, studying hard meant they might have to spend “more time and many nights” reading, especially during exam period; for them, an instructor’s assignment “to retell” 10 to 15 pages for each class was excessive. This of course clashed with the idea that living the student “social” life was an essential part of being a student, and perhaps the most important part.

COMMITTED STUDENTS: DEPRECATING ACADEMIC CULTURE Some FFL students had come to the university expecting to actually improve their skills in addition to having social experiences and developing a broader humanitarian/intellectual understanding or outlook. In the case of several second year Translation Studies students, skill acquisition was something they did not find. I interviewed three students in TS2 in the spring of 2008. Typically, these three were among only six or seven in their group to come to class on a regular basis, and some days, even they did not come. All three of these young women were from professional families; two lived in the city, and Galina was from Kazakhstan. She had enrolled in a Bishkek university because the tuition for a similar translation degree was four times higher in her local university up north and took a long marshrutka (bus) ride each way on days she knew there would be classes. These three students were attracted to this university by the opportunity they were promised to practice their English with foreigners. Their English (and German) was already at an intermediate level from secondary school, and other than their brief interactions with the few native English speakers

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at the FFL, they were not impressed with their English instruction. Svetlana, for example, claimed that her English was better already than some of her teachers, which was seconded by her friend Galina. To support their negative opinion, they quoted a bilingual South Asian student studying in the medical program and also teaching English for several private companies. He told them that not one of the FFL teachers spoke English correctly. Galina believed that, for her, coming to classes every day was important. But even though she was willing to travel an hour each way to “get good knowledge,” it was hard to do so: There are a lot of things that I and my classmate do not like. We have a terrible building; it is in poor condition and it is old. And there are a lot of facilities that are not ready for good study; we have [only one] tape-recorder; and this tape-recorder is older than me. And our teachers pronunciation needs to be better…I do not want to tell that all the teachers are very bad; yes, some of them are very professional and good teachers, but others make a lot of mistakes. I know [when] it’s mistake; it is frustrating.

Galina and Svetlana appeared very task-oriented, but did report that social life was important for them, and even that parents expected them to have it during this coming-of-age period in their lives. They both reported similar socializing events as Nurbeck had in earlier testimony. Stating that almost everyone in their group remains good friends, Svetlana explained some of their group festivities and their parents’ attitude toward them: We are always in communication, and have good relationships. We sometimes go to the café or bar to celebrate something together; [last year] we celebrated together and rented a big café. We got a drink and celebrated our first [student] year…when I studied at [secondary] school, my father and mother did not let me to go to disco club or café, but now [that I am older], my mother says that while I am young and have some places to go—to the café or disco club—I have to do that; it’s only for young people. For example, [when] I am 60 years old, I am sure I would not want to go to the disco—but now we are young [and] beautiful. But we do not spend every day [like this]; only maybe on a weekend.

With regard to “studying,” I remained perplexed as to how academic objectives could be achieved when only half of the group of 12 came to classes. In response, Svetlana and Galina revealed their instructional frustrations. They both agreed that only about 25% of their teachers were teaching them anything. According to them, their instructors sometimes spent more time telling stories than teaching according to their plan. They also chimed in on the not atypical topic of inadequately prepared teachers, attributing this to two major problems: young teachers with no advanced training and the challenges of language of instruction. Tanya put it this way:

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We have many teachers here who just graduated from our university, [which means] they have only five years preparation, [which] is not enough. I think that they must [continue] their education, and only after that come back go to teach other people…One of our teachers sometimes tries to teach [English grammar] in Russian, but he cannot [help us] because he does not know Russian. He [appears] to know Kyrgyz well, but we do not know Kyrgyz. He tries to teach in English, but if somebody does not understand, he cannot explain it [well enough] to us…So for one year [in this class] we studied for nothing.

Galina, who had by now taken over the conversation, had harsh words to say about many of the students at the university and in her group. Not only were six of the twelve students in the group “lazy,” according to her, and rarely at the university, but somehow many of these students were getting better grades than she and others who came. “We have some students [who] do not attend our classes, but they get marks, and sometimes these marks are better than ours—but we do not see these students. [Some] come to the lessons; but they don’t do anything. Only about four or five students come and do anything.” When I asked how long ago the no-shows at least checked in, Galina laughingly replied, “one has not come since last year; and one came only once on September 1.” Since it was now spring in the second year of this group’s studies, I inquired how these two kept receiving marks. Galina replied: “I think that there are some people [in the university] who can do this for them, and they take money [for this].” Galina and Svetlana both underscored that not all the teachers were in on the taking-money-for-grades deal, but as a rule there was corruption in the university. They also agreed that students who infrequently came were able to go over the head of (especially younger) instructors who questioned their absence, and appeal to a higher-up who would intercede on their behalf. And these higher-ups could also intercede when it came to a poor grade. The interviewees reluctantly revealed that corruption is basically part of the culture; their teachers are enmeshed within it, and one day they will be as well—as soon as they try to find a position themselves. “Teachers get a miserable salary and they have to take other money. And [when] I want to get job, I [will have to] pay money [to buy] my job. And if I don’t give money, they won’t give me a job.” In any event, both girls concurred that some of their teachers seemed less than dedicated to teaching than they had hoped even if they were corruptible; coming to class late and leaving early. For Galina, who traveled two hours daily to be in classes, this was especially frustrating. Just as she accused some students, she accused some teachers of “being lazy.” Most of the skills she wanted to learn in order to get a job as a translator were coming at her own expense and on her own time:

.

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES • 113 [Often] when we are present at our lessons, we are left alone doing our exercises, or we are asked to read something, but [halfway through] the class she [our teacher] will leave the room, and we are on our own. And, we have plenty of teachers who come later than they [are] supposed to. I think that teachers have small salary and they don’t want to work for this salary and they try to do nothing and that is why they take money for marks…[but] besides our classes, we try to learn on our own. We work with different visual materials and with disks, and cassettes. I have computer at home, and I buy a disk, and I listen at home…I do not have internet, but I can insert some good information and look through it to learn what I need. Here also one teacher has a special class with computer and how to translate grammar on the computer… [yet] this is not a [useful] class because we can do it at home, and when we come to class we do not want to try because we already know how to do that.

I pursued further with Svetlana and Galina about where and how they studied if and when they came to classes and found no teacher, or when their classes ended early, hoping to hear from these “calculating” students about the role of the library in their academic lives. Instead I heard that they preferred to go to internet clubs because “in our library we have old books and old information, and we need more [and modern] information, that’s why we go to internet club. We have a poor library [with few] books, and sometimes we want to read something, but we cannot find anything.” And Galina also introduced an issue that is likely faced by the many students studying in Kyrgyzstan who are from other countries: they have to pay more for using the national (Kyrgyz) library resources than Kyrgyz citizens. Neither Galina nor Svetlana actually thought that their studies at the FFL would lead directly to any jobs as translators, which their training was ostensibly designed for. Instead, Galina suggested maybe she would open her own business; Svetlana laughingly claimed that perhaps she would become a pop singer. Then again, they both read local newspapers and saw frequent listings for interpreters for international companies. They had hopes. But in the end, they were among the comparatively few students I found on the BNU campus who still hoped to acquire knowledge and who claimed to seek it elsewhere when they could not find it from their FFL instructors. Tanya responded to my “why come if things are so bad” question with: “because I like subjects [like] English and History; humanitarian subjects. [I do not care for] math or chemistry, or physics…I just want to learn—and get a diploma.” SPEAKING COMPARATIVELY: STUDENTS, UNIVERSITIES AND REGIONALISM There appear to be at least four student subcultures at the FFL. There are students here who are searching for and who are finding some “freedom,” in which the university is a backdrop for their activities. They attend classes

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infrequently and have heard that the consequences will be minimal, as every grade can somehow be negotiated. There are students who enter the university without the academic backgrounds they really need, but who try to attend all classes, hoping that something good will happen to them. Then there are students who fully embrace the university and seek leadership roles and responsibilities within it. Finally, there are students who come to the FFL seeking real academic and professional skills which they often do not find, so they pick and choose the teachers they like and the classes they think are meaningful. Yet, as we also know from the attrition rates at the FFL, many students— perhaps 25% or more—leave the university within (usually after) the first year of study. These students might come from any of these groups; they are the students who fail to bond with FFL for one reason or another and seek to enter another institution where they think they will be better connected. Nazgul, a former student who I was able to track down, was one of them. She enrolled at the FFL in 2007 but transferred a year later to a private university. In fact, she was one of the students in the first year Western Studies program that left, forcing the combination of two first-year groups into one. Nazgul has a story that weaves together many of the social, cultural, and educational issues in Kyrgyzstan today. Her narrative highlights first-hand the difficulties of migration, region, and social class, as well as problems of academic quality in state universities. Nazgul is from a village near the southern city of Jalalabad, where her father was a physician. After she finished secondary education, her entire family moved to Bishkek in search of better work opportunities for her father and her siblings, all of whom are older than her. Nazgul lives with an older brother, who is a doctor as well; her older sister lives with them when she is not traveling on business. Her parents eventually migrated to Russia where her father found a better paying position. Her parents and her siblings support her financially, and they also help one of Nazgul’s sisters, who is a teacher who has to also work in the bazaar to supplement her pitiful salary. Nazgul’s father had graduated from a higher education institution, and Nazgul was better informed than many others about what was supposed to happen at university. She also differed from many in Western Studies because she came to university with an eye to specifically improve her English skills rather than to “receive good knowledge” or just a diploma of dubious value in translation. After secondary school she aspired to enter one of the private universities in Bishkek—AUCA—but her TOEFL score was inadequate for their entrance requirements. Her subsequent strategy was to attend a state university and work on her English, expecting to sit again for the exam the next year to enter AUCA. In 2008 she sat for and passed

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the exam she failed the year before, then left BNU and enrolled at AUCA as a first-year student. I asked Nazgul a variety of questions about how she chose BNU as an alternative, how she got along with others in her group, about teacher quality and university resources, etc. She did not paint a flattering picture. A sister advised her to enter Arabaev, the former women’s pedagogical university, but she was dissuaded from entering there because of its image as a haven for “students from the village.” This diminished its status in her eyes, and she chose BNU instead. Nazgul made this decision mainly upon the advice of a slightly older friend and her English teacher who was hired at FFL. Nazgul thought she could continue her English studies partly with this friend and mentor. Also, like many others, she been impressed by the stately façade of the main university building. Finally, she was enticed by the opportunity to attend a new university that advertised itself as “international.” But Nazgul was very disappointed with the attitudes of many students as well as the teaching quality at BNU. She found only two types of students in Western Studies: those whose English was “ok” and they either did not come to class or came but seemed unconcerned with improving it further; and an equal number of students who did not know any English at all. She wondered how they were admitted to the program in the first place. Nazgul reported no difficulty in her English classes. She claimed she scored a “5” on every test and in every course, since these grades were based upon language exercises and grammar. She took advantage of visiting foreigners, preferring to practice her English with them rather than with some of her teachers whose English she found to be poor. Comparing her academic experiences in two universities, she argued that not only the English competence of her current teachers was much higher, but also that the academic culture was completely different. For one thing, she received very different assignments in her new major of Sociology at AUCA, compared to what she was asked to do at BNU in Western Studies: You know the main difference between the universities, there at BNU to “study” was to read a book and retell the text…[Our FFL teachers] gave us easy dialogues, or easy texts; we just need to know the words, and we read some texts and retell this text —exactly what was written in the text—and here the system is different. Here, that is not the main point; you should read the book, analyze the text and then tell your own opinion. [This] is more difficult sometimes, for example, in psychology classes. It’s difficult.

Since Nazgul found it harder to study at her new university and since she was not exactly sure what she would do for a job with a degree in Sociology, I wondered if she was certain she was in a better place now than she was before. She had some idea about the professional job market and responded a

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bit differently than most of the FFL students with whom she studied earlier. She did understand that maybe she would have to obtain another academic degree; perhaps in Germany. But she wanted to return and one day to work with disabled people in Kyrgyzstan. She was very clear, though, about why, for her, continuing at BNU was out of the question: There were terrible conditions—there were bad chairs, bad boards, and [few] computers, while here we have a computer for an hour and thirty minutes [every day]; it’s good, I like it. And here, if you have problems, all teachers can help you, can explain to you, and they are glad if you are interested in their topics; but if you ask some questions at BNU … it was difficult… Maybe because of their salary, teachers do not want to work there; maybe because of that; because while I was studying there, I paid only 18,000 soms and here over 80,000 soms. I [actually pay] 1,000 dollars [40,000 soms]; I have a scholarship for 1150 dollars [46,000 soms]. This is based upon my TOEFL, grades, and family situation.

Nazgul raised another problem in teacher attitudes—student interaction. Some teachers at BNU stereotyped village girls from the south as uneducated: I can give you one example, while I was studying in BNU, I took an [private] computer class [in the evenings], and one teacher was sort of like “you are crazy.” I explained I did not have it at [secondary] school, which is why I wanted go to this class…[This] was interesting for me, first of all. Secondly, I know now some [computer] programs, and last year I did not know them. My [BNU computer] teacher could not explain things well to me; and she also said things like “you are from South,” that “you are village girls.” She always said that, and it was not to me only. I even wanted to cry, because I am from the south…It made me so sad, and after that, I did not come to her classes; but in the end of the year, she gave me a “three.” At BNU, a lot of students are from the South; a lot of them are from the village. Those who are from the north they say that some of our [southern] traditions are like Uzbek traditions. For some students this is very difficult or bad, but for me, it is not a problem. I know I am Kyrgyz, and from the south and from the village.

Nazgul actually found her Western Studies group mates less than hospitable to her. She thought there were “many beautiful girls” in attendance some days, but she did not fit in with them. It is very interesting, while I was studying there, there were some beautiful girls at that university, but they did not want to talk to me…maybe because I was from the village, from the south region. They thought I am like a rural girl; and I do not know why maybe they were from Bishkek…Now they [treat me differently]; it makes me cry because—I do not know—maybe they think I am cool because I am studying at [a more prestigious university]. I think it is different now.

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At the other extreme were students whom Nazgul could not understand for a different reason: what was their motivation for entering in the first place? And how were they able to stay enrolled? The latter question I provoked: There were very, very smart girls, sure, but there were some girls who for one year did not speak English well. I just do not know what they were doing in the university. They did not get knowledge; why are they interested in the university? I do not know why…You know I think they do not look like lazy girls, or so poor that could enter the university. They did not want to look like lazy girls for their friends only; for the people who know them. And that is why they entered a university. But they don’t come to the university—they did not get education, they did not get knowledge…[While] I did not give money for the teachers, I heard that some students pay for the grades. Not from our freshmen, but from sophomores…

THE TROUBLED ACADEMIC CULTURE: TEACHERS’ WOES Students criticizing one or another aspect of their learning process are not the only ones who complain about the situation. Both teachers and administrators talk (usually off the record) about lack of equipment and low salaries and facilities, and many also complain about the quality of students. We heard such voices in the previous chapter, and here we consider more pointed descriptions. There is no tenure in Kyrgyz universities and teachers can and are asked to leave routinely. I thus conceal identities of those who speak on these matters. Some young and even middle-aged instructors at the FFL are actually happy to be there. Often, though, they do not depend completely upon their university salaries to run a household or pay tuition for their own children’s education; they either still live with their parents, if they are young, or have working husbands if they are older. Eliza was one such instructor who mostly taught in Translation Studies. Her husband worked in law enforcement, so there was another steady income in her household. She taught at BNU for 14 hours a week and at another university about 8 hours. Her teaching load was lighter compared to other instructors. Like many other FFL instructors and students, Eliza was originally from the South. She had lived in Bishkek only one year by the spring of 2008, having migrated North with her husband and father. Eliza had ten years of teaching experience, and taught practical grammar and world literature. She was a creative translator of Kyrgyz poetry into English, and had some publications including manuals for the teaching of English. Eliza was pleased with how her students at BNU compared to those she had taught in Osh. In Bishkek, she argued, students spoke freely in class,

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although she wanted them to pay more attention to grammar. In Osh she had found students far more hesitant to interact with her, and their conversational skills more limited. She thought that many of her students here were resourceful, interested, and analytical; although some were less active and less strong, she considered it her duty to find ways to help them. Part of the difference between classroom participation in the North and South Eliza attributed indirectly to nationality and the language of instruction in in their schools. More of her students in Bishkek, she thought, had been educated in Russian rather than in Kyrgyz language. This is compounded with rural versus urban upbringing, since few Russian language schools operate in the village. Eliza, ethnically Kyrgyz, nevertheless argued: Russian students, who finished Russian school [including Kyrgyz and other nationalities who studied in Russian] have better manners, are well-behaved, more independent, and open to [new] things. What they see and what do they know, they will share. Kyrgyz [students] they just keep silent…I do not know; from their culture? [Because] they are from the villages? That may be. I [studied] in Russian school, but our school was a mixed school, most of classes were in Russian. I speak Kyrgyz, I speak Russian, at home with my children I speak Kyrgyz.

Although Eliza liked her work and liked many of her students and colleagues, she eventually began talking about university problems that interfered with the studying and learning she would like to have seen more of. To start with, instructor salaries were low. At FFL, she earned only 3000 soms per month—about $80 US. If and when she actually became a senior teacher, her salary would increase by about 50%, to 4500 soms. This is still not enough to run a household and put food on the table in Bishkek. And of course many young instructors earned significantly less. I asked Eliza how salary affected her and other instructors and if it was hard to find good instructors for FFL. She replied that “the qualified teachers prefer to work in foreign companies or in higher paid universities, but in the better universities, instructors are required to do some research and to publish.” She, too, wanted more time to “work on my stuff,” but said that when she and other instructors had to work at two (or more) universities, “there is no time to do anything—but I try.” And unlike publishing in America, when instructors publish in Kyrgyzstan, they have to pay the publication costs from their own pocket. The concept of a “strong teacher” emerged often in explanations for good versus poor learning in Kyrgyz universities. Eliza agreed that the quality and experiences of instructors was the number one ingredient to a good instructional program. Unfortunately, until faculty compensation was vastly improved in the country, the best teachers would not be available, since

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they had all left for other opportunities. Eliza said that almost none of the students she had trained with to be English teachers was a teacher today: Most of my colleagues—or used to be colleagues—do not teach anymore. My classmates and friends—they became businessmen. They went and started businesses instead, and they laugh at me and say “you are almost 40 and you are teaching stupid students [who make you nervous]?” Some of them invite me to join them. They work in the market; in Kazakhstan or in Russia, and now just use English for communication.

Eliza even claimed that foreign language teachers (as well as many others) were better and better off in city secondary schools than in the university. Developing further the question of academic quality, she acknowledged that standards for instructors were higher at her other university than at FFL. Even though the advertised standards to become an instructor were supposedly rigorous, in the end, such standards were minimally reinforced; much as the admission requirements for students: There were so many requirements before I came to the university, and here, we don’t…If you just have a diploma—without looking at the marks or how you graduated—they do not care…Some teachers [at BNU] now are—how to say—unqualified. Teachers at [secondary] schools are [often] stronger than university teachers; we do not know how to say this in public, but we know. We recognize that we are weak; we do not meet the requirements of the university…But nevertheless, it is our subjective [subyektivnoye] opinion. We cannot change that, but now at least we should try. If university teachers are weak, of course students will be weak. [And] when they work in future, [they] cannot be a good professional.

I started to inquire about the resources available to students, particularly books that I rarely saw any students carrying or reading, and Eliza indicated that: Students really do not have any books; and we [teachers] do not have any books; that is why we can [borrow] books from the library—or at least copy them. But without books it is hard, you understand. In some groups—some programs do not have books at all. They make individual copies [which are shared in class]. But for the moment in my courses on Russian literature and American literature—I enjoy my class teaching literature—the students tell me that they [find materials and] read themselves and do some analysis. This is wonderful! But probably it would be nicer if they have their own materials. I guess this is too expensive for students and for the parents.

I then asked Eliza about the problem of missing students I experienced in most of the classes I visited. After all, the education ministry approves programs and specializations based upon how many hours of classes students are supposed to undertake. There is little flexibility to allow for “in-

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ternships” or outside instructional experiences—on paper. Eliza agreed that this was sometimes a problem for her and other teachers, but in practice this had to happen. Some of these students she claimed were able to make up the work they missed in class; with others, various sorts of negotiations had to be made or they had to be tolerated: Of course, [many] of the students work somewhere, but most students, they do not work, they just study full time. Here, [all students] are considered to be full time, but in fact, they are not. They are part-time, and some of them are absent because they work somewhere to make money…Sometimes among them are resourceful, confident students. They work and they study well; they read and make all the tasks, they pass all the credits [tests]…but some students they do not come; they will not come. I do not know, maybe some problems in their family, because of lack of money, or something, I do not know.

I was curious about how the less intelligent and less resourceful students who do not attend get passed along anyway, and Eliza explained: It’s called in our culture—in our system—it is called peresdat, or to retake or re-pass the exam. [The administration] gives us a limit or deadline for this repassing; students should retake the exam before that deadline. Of course, if not, they will be omitted; they will be expelled. [But] in our culture—yes, you are right, yes. If you noticed that many students—they are coming to rectors, or presidents and ask them. And it’s like our system. They will make us. Even though [students] did not pass or retake the test or exam, someone else will ask us, so, they will make us—“put a [grade] for that one; he is [somebody’s] son; he is giving us our salary—pass, put them, you have to pass them.” This happens even though we did not know his [student’s] face; even we [have never] seen him.

Eliza maintained that she tried hard to avoid ultimatums from those above her, but in the end—for one reason or another—she and her colleagues have to compromise their standards: I demand them—I require them to come to me to pass. I ask them to come individually…[and] of course [some] students really need some help; they work at night [or] in the morning. And they come and explain why they did not come [to class], and we [teachers] make some exceptions, we try to face their needs, that is why. And sometimes, if they come to the rector, we don’t like them. But if a student comes and explains his needs—in such a humane way—we will…work something out.

Kunduz, another teacher of foreign language who teaches translation and conversation, is younger and graduated from another university foreign language program only five years ago. Despite her youth, she is one of the key teachers at the FFL and works with students in all three special-

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izations: Western Studies, World Journalism, and Translation Studies. She is also considered an expert in American History in the Western Studies department because she spent one semester in the US attending classes in subjects related to American Studies. Yet, she has not written or researched anything in this field; she is actually pursuing her advanced degree writing a dissertation about translating political terminology into Kyrgyz. So, she is considered to be an American Studies specialist with no actual research experience in American Studies. Although Kunduz is a trusted lieutenant of the FFL head, she recently became a part-time rather than full-time instructor as she found another part-time and better paying job at an international organization. As she explained, the salary at her university (about $100) was just not enough for her, even though she was single and lived with her parents. She also did not like the teaching and learning conditions either, admitting that it was very hard to provide quality instruction: You know, our salary is not good at [BNU]. [And] for this money I can’t live, because it is not enough. For example, I live with my parents and I do not need to pay for my apartment and I do not need to pay for my food. But anyway, this money does not work for me, and that is why I have to work in another place, to make more money. And, that job is more interesting than here, because, you know, the conditions of our work [here] are not good. [In] the other place, there are all the [best] conditions: it’s modern; has a tape-recorder and a white board…[To improve conditions here] it would be better to have some projectors, like one projector for our [FFL]—separate from the university—and a TV, since our TV does not work now [in 2008]. So, what do we have? A tape recorder which is [too] old. We have only one taperecorder, and we don’t have a DVD player, and we don’t have enough computers. And our [technicians] don’t work [know how to repair] the computers, and they don’t monitor them. And, they are full of viruses. We have two computers in our dean’s office, and these two computers are full of viruses, and no one cares about that.

Even so, Kunduz argued, enrollments continued to grow at FFL regardless of tuition increases, but how it benefited her and her colleagues was a mystery. The university grabbed the money ($450 per student) before any of it could trickle down to the instructional level. When I asked her about where the money went, she suggested that it was being siphoned off at higher administrative levels that seemed to her to have little to do with teaching students: Our Faculty [of Foreign Languages] does not have the power [to control] this money. You know our [university] is divided into two parts; one part is partially state [controlled] and one is private. The one where we are now, which is called [the Internet Academy] is completely private. So, in our university there are about seven thousand students, and for this number of students we

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have too many administrative workers. Like we have a [rector], then several vice-presidents, and many vice-rectors and deans, so I do not know who they are…And we can compare with other universities, like for example ------ with about 30,000 students, and there they have only one rector and four or three vice-rectors, and others are deans, directors, and so on, so on. But we have too many administration or administrative workers. I do not know what they do. Everybody has his own power, and our students pay to the Internet Academy, [so] we have cash, separately from the university. And I do not know exactly where this money goes.

Contrary to what might be expected, rising enrollments and rising tuition in the state universities of Kyrgyzstan don’t lead to faculty salary raises; somehow finances are controlled by the government—even in supposedly “private” parts of this and other universities. Sometimes universities are accused of hiding or misappropriating funds, which leads to constant auditing by state officials. BNU was audited in 2008 and found to have misplaced, misspent, or stolen operating funds. The faculty were then docked by the administration even though their salaries were already miserable and they had nothing to do with the controversy. Kunduz made the difficult decision to take on other work as a result of the unilateral cuts to teacher salaries made that year. Although her calculations appear inaccurate, the net effect upon her remained the same: So, just [for example], last year our administration cut our salary. My salary was cut by 60%. [My salary] last year was about 4200 soms, and then after cutting, I got 2500. And we were all angry, we had [complained] to the administration, and they said like “you can do whatever you like—stay or leave; you don’t work very hard,” then so on and so on. And we were saying, “huh?—we did this and this and this.” We told about all the work which we’ve done; and they say “no, its little work, and we don’t have enough money to pay you,” and blah-blah-blah. So and we went to the lawyer, but some teachers [did not go]…you know our Kyrgyz mentality…Sometimes I do not understand our Kyrgyz mentality, for example, some people they think that if they [behave] this way, they will be—how to say—mm, they will get a bad reputation…Meanwhile, the rector of the Internet Academy said he would compensate this money in December and blah blah blah… And of course nothing happened.

Kunduz went on to suggest that corruption in some form—especially selling grades—had become almost normal at the university, although she thought her faculty was better than most in this regard: I think one of the problems in our country like low salary, and that is why the corruption is going; this is the main reason. [Teachers] can be corrupted because of very low salary and so how can they live? They want to buy [things] and to live in good conditions…For example—not in our university, but I heard about other universities—that their salary is so low [that] when the

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES • 123 term is ending—winter term and summer term, and when we have exams and zachety, during this time they make some money…You know our students like are so-so, work so-so, and some of them work [have jobs]. And they do not attend their courses, and they come to the teacher and say, “I could not attend your class because I am working and blah blah blah, and I…will pay you; give me a [good] mark. [Some] teachers, they will not sell their grades… you know, we have a fewer percentage of this kind of teachers.

As Kunduz explained, she was not trying to pay her own rent or buy her own food and she was not married and had no children. Her situation was not as dire as others on the faculty, and she claimed she would not take a bribe; she had her own methods for dealing with the many students who did not complete her assignments. This basically boiled down to giving individual home tasks and negotiating with a student about what was acceptable progress in the course. So, usually, when they do not come to my class, they come to me [some other time] during the semester, during the term, and they get extra work for their home, and during the term they will [return assignments]. And when the term ends, I give them list of the questions which I might to ask them during exam, so they will be prepared.

Perhaps 20–30% of Kunduz’s students did not come to any given class of the many I visited over two years of my participant observation. I teased her about this and asked why she held class at all and did not just work with all students independently. Like Eliza, she seemed sympathetic to the typical sort of student justifications for missing class. On the other hand, instead of demanding better attendance from students because it was their responsibility, she insisted that they needed to come to class because they were paying, and her salary came from their tuition, and therefore, they were her clients. She nevertheless recognized that some of her students were not only “lazy,” but were just to get a diploma after a specified number of years of “being a student:” You know, not all the students work [like to study]. We have some students who want to study, and who want to get some education and some knowledge. That is why I also like to explain to my students [that] “you have to come to my class because I am getting my salary; you pay for your education.” And at the beginning of the semester I explain [that] “you have to require [things] from me, like, for example you pay me, and I have teach you…You know, I explain it this way. But sometimes, they just want to have their diploma…This is one of the main problems in Kyrgyzstan, because some students—some of the young generation—they just want to have a diploma in five years or four years, because they want to work in good places, and of course, if they do not have diploma, they will not work in a good place, but if they have diploma… [Some] kind of students who have much money—their parents have high sta-

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tus—they think “I will get my diploma in 5 years and my father or my mother will help me to find a job.”

A major reason that some students are resistant to define the university as a place to study hard and learn particular skills is cultural: family connections and social networks are crucial in finding jobs. Kunduz commented upon the importance of connections, family, and “tribe” among the Kyrgyz in general, and with regard to work organizations including the university: Usually it happens that parents find jobs for their children, but sometimes if some students are good in their language—in their specialty—they will find a job [in] international organizations. [But], we have—how to say—tribalism in government structures; the ministry of education, or [in some] international affairs [offices]. So, in these structures, we need to have some people there who our parents know…How does tribalism work? Like, for example, if I work in a high job—like in the ministry of education—I will have—like, relatives and they will come and say “ooh-ooh, you are working here!” And “I have a daughter or son, and can you hire him or can you find him a job?” So, of course I will say “yes!” And this will be one relative, and then the other will come and so… it continues kind of tsepochka [like a chain]….It continues.

According to Kunduz, after their studies some students might find a job without connections—mostly searching through local newspapers, TV, or other advertisements. How did the university help graduates in this endeavor? They did nothing at all: “We give them education and give them diploma, and they (try to) find work on their own.”

TEACHING AND LEARNING ISSUES IN THE EYES OF AN INTERNATIONAL VOLUNTEER Jamie was an international volunteer assigned to teach at BNU from 2006– 2008. He taught or appeared in virtually every Western Studies, International Journalism, and Translation Studies group during this period. His wife, an international volunteer to another institution, often came to university with Jamie and developed her own (mostly female) student following. Both of them—untrained as teachers but performing as such—were a main recruiting factor used by the university. When students said that the availability of foreigners to talk with was a reason they came to BNU, they were for the most part speaking of Jamie and his wife. Students of course did not understand that these two worked for an independent organization and were at the university only temporarily. Students also did not understand that they likely would not be replaced when they left, since the sponsoring organization had a limited supply of volunteers and spreads them around many schools and universities in the country.

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Jamie, like many foreigners who come to the country, was surprised that although students he taught reported spending years in English classes in secondary school, very few of them could actually speak to him in English, and therefore he found it hard to work with them. He thus negotiated a teaching schedule where he could work more intensively with several groups rather than more casually across the entire FFL. You know my schedule changes every semester. Usually I have classes with upper groups: this year it’s fourth year; next year third year as well. I [also] negotiated kind of special schedule with second year students. I have them four times a week, one hour each time…You know, there is no limit to the schedule. I did that because normally they try to give me an hour or two with each group, once a week. But there is no continuity this way. I can get one project and teach a whole group. I thought it would be better…It’s true [that they had English in school], but when they show up [here], they are not speaking well, [so] teaching takes a lot of energy. I guess the difficult part of it is not speaking Russian [or Kyrgyz]. You know at the very beginning, it’s a lot of me talking: “My name is Jamie; what is your name?” They have had a lot of grammar at this point—with other teachers—so I also try to locate kind of where their weaknesses are. You know, it’s always multi-level class; it’s always challenging; sometimes there is a student who can talk a little bit.

I was also interested in Jamie’s take on high student absence rates, and he concurred that this was a problem: student attendance declined, with fewer and fewer students in class between year one and year four. Missing class, however, did not seem to affect their prospects for graduating. He compared the BNU process of obtaining a diploma to what amounted to an end-of-year equivalency exam, where poor performers can study independently and then sit for a test leading to a diploma: [One reason] they stop coming is they get a job; and that’s the way it is understood. There are not a lot of [other] possibilities, [since] you are not allowed to select within the class schedule or to adjust your job schedule. Many students do not come because they have work; this happens a lot. I think also that many do not like classes, and I hear this [often]…[Getting a diploma] here is like [getting] a GED. In America you have to actually attend four years at high school, but here some students only attend at the end of the semester. In the United States, you [would] have to go back to take the whole course over again, if you missed most of it. But here, students do not do that; they have final exams at the end of classes. These are like personal interviews, verbal conversations. I have seen a whole lot of that, you know. There is not a lot of objective scoring. I helped one teacher in Western Studies [who taught] my students from last year. The way she graded was kind of interesting. There is one girl I like a lot from the first year. You know she was energetic; she was learning and did better than average on tasks. But the teacher wanted to give her a low grade, I think it is because of the attitude she brought to the class.

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I shared a story with Jamie about Kamin who retook the Sociology exam for a third time in a year after the course was over. Kamin confided that he had tracked down the instructor one day, and that the exam took him only 10 minutes. The only thing the instructor asked was to name three things he had learned in that sociology course. Kamin was only able to recall two things, and he received a “3” for the course—the lowest passing grade. Jamie was not surprised; this was the sort of story he typically heard. Actually, Jamie thought that it was very hard to enforce performance standards; there were so many ways to bypass them. He admitted that some teachers actually tried to force students to learn and would accept few excuses, but students would complain about them and ignore them when possible. Jamie’s attempts to put standards into practice and to mandate individual rather than collective work in his class were resisted: Sometimes, they do not show up. Some students do want to learn still, to do their homework, and read the one or two pages I give them, but by large, to hold to standards—it is very difficult. And giving a test? You know, this [becomes] a community effort, kind of write-and-share. It is not really academic; it is a disaster. Today I [had a class] and I gave a worksheet, and I said “you can make mistakes while learning language; what I want is for you to work. If you do not know the answer, just make a guess; your best guess.” And still you know one girl tried to work together with other students…[So], I’ve done different things about grading. I’ve started with where it’s basically attendance. But this semester it’s going to be more based on homework and the test scores. I try to keep track of that. In the beginning, I tried to enforce standards. But just after my [in-country] training—when students just showed up and tried—the students got “three;” enough to pass. Another volunteer [from his organization] actually used TV and another technology in her class. She taught an economics class at BNU, just for a couple of weeks. But no students showed up, and she just said, you know, “where are all those students?” It did not work out and she just walked out.

Jamie was sympathetic about the plight of teachers, especially when he witnessed an abrupt cut in their salary. But he was critical about lack of professionalism when there was so little coordination between instructors teaching students from year one to year four, and eventually he spent less and less time with them. He was also surprised to see that almost all equipment FFL used for instruction came from his “hypothetical” salary paid by the university: In my first year I spent more time with teachers at BNU. I talked to them— some of them—joking about teaching lives and what happened, but [recently] there was a deal with salaries; kind of ugly. [None of the teachers know] where money’s going or whatever. They did not have enough money to pay everybody. Teachers are paid by the number of hours they teach. There is a sheet of paper you can find if you go to the accounting department—kind of

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES • 127 a salary sheet—saying how many hours they are teaching. And my name is on it [too], but I cannot actually collect the salary; I spend it on the university somehow...[They] just bought a tape-recorder and new DVD player [with my salary]. So now I contribute to that room [where they keep the DVD player] and the secretary’s salary that is in charge of equipment…[Meanwhile], our tapes are pretty old and of low quality. And they do not have enough books for everybody, so some of the students use the teachers’ materials. I’ve been “resourced” a little bit, too. I went to my organization and they have a library there [where I retrieved some books]. But, there is no continuity: “this is for level one and this is for level two.” What they have is a quantitative approach, [counting mostly] how many hours of English are taught every week. But students learn or what they should learn? Theoretically, second year students should have something different from what they learned in the first year and there should be some diagnosis to figure out student levels…But there is not.

Jamie reported that over time he withdrew from much interaction with other teachers and administrators at the FFL and BNU, preferring rather to work with a number of his students instead. He thought the system of instruction was basically pretty hopeless, but he did not despair with individual students, proclaiming that there “are still enough of them, I like to think, that they are learning despite the education system. You know the need for knowledge—it’s beautiful!”

AN ACADEMIC CULTURAL DEPRIVATION ARGUMENT Omirbek was introduced in the previous chapter as a general champion of university growth and expansion in the period of transition to a market economy. He thought the university might compensate for the increasingly poor secondary school instruction to be found in rural parts of the country, and he also believed the university could provide a bridge back to the country for youth forced to emigrate to find work just now. The university, in essence, was a mechanism of social cohesion. He understood that the university had difficulty dealing with many students, mostly from rural parts of the country and especially from the South where secondary schooling was weaker. He suggested his view of larger possibilities and importance of the university came from his own biography, since he himself attended university in Osh for several years. He was then admitted to Political Science program at a private Bishkek university, and also went for graduate work in the US. Spreading competencies thinly was a well-practiced art form at BNU. The university professes to teach many specializations with faculty who have little training related to what they teach. Omirbek indeed recognized this as one weakness in his university. Since he had an advanced academic degree in Political Science from a foreign university, his rector calculated that he

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must have the managerial capabilities to run an office responsible for connecting the university to potential partnerships around the world. Omirbek was designated to write projects for collaboration and funding, and was the one and only one to undertake these activities for the university even though he had never done such things and had only worked at the university for six months. Omirbek was hired as the leading specialist in the university international office, and his office was far better equipped than any other I saw at BNU. The technology there was fifty years ahead of anything available to students. Omirbek said he was still studying how to actually implement the various international agreements previously signed by his rector at the same time as he was furiously working on new projects and letters of agreement. The impossible scope of his formal duties is revealed in his description: My main responsibility is foreign contacts of the university: it could be [with] a university or a state agency—either inside the country or outside the country. My second [responsibility] is, for example, we have the Bologna Process and other projects for the university, and I administer that Process. Sometimes I need to work more days to make my own understanding of this Process and also to make suggestions…My third responsibility is [to] assistant the [rector] who is trying to organize a [new partnership]. So far [I have not] made a contact with [the international potential partner]. My fourth function is to work with foreign students, and also the fifth, I translate [for the administration] from Russian to English. So, you know a lot of things are going on around here.

Omirbek thought it was his duty to contribute to the instructional mission of the university, and in addition to his administrative position, he agreed to teach a course in the Western Studies program. He did have training in this area, and he considered the FFL head, Kanikei, to be a progressive force. His course was an elective in that program, created specifically by Kanikei, after Omirbek agreed he would teach it. Meanwhile, when a dean of a different faculty asked him to teach courses in international law that he politely refused, that got him in a bit of hot water. He did not feel, however, that his one-year stint in America as an international student qualified him to be an expert in international law. During the spring semester of 2009 I attended Omirbek’s class with my WS2 (then WS3) group. I was much impressed with his seminar on political theory as it applied to the politics of leadership in Central Asia and upon his analysis of the Central Asian country (Tajikistan) which he introduced as a “failed state.” It seemed obvious to me that his teaching style and attempts to interact with students were learned either in the private Kyrgyz

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university where he studied or in his foreign MA program. That is, he did not give answers first and expect students to write them down; he asked them to use the failed state theory and see if and how it might apply to Tajikistan. Every time I came to class I wanted to ask a question about something I did not understand or some further illustrations of the points he made and was really surprised about my students’ behavior: Many of them would actually come to this class, but half of the group would usually arrive ten or fifteen minutes late, and some did not show up until the mid-point of the 2 hour session. Then, during the ten minute class break, some students disappeared for 30 minutes or did not return at all. I tried not to ask too many questions and dominate the discussion in class—organized not for my education—but found there was no discussion to dominate; it was always just me asking a question and trying to digest the answers. When I asked my students what they thought of Omirbek’s instruction, they mostly just complained about his English pronunciation, missing the entire content of the presented material and his pedagogical approach. Omirbek was the model of patience with students and kept working with them even when they were obviously bored or not interested. I scheduled several interviews with him to try to ascertain why he tolerated such little respect in the class and why he worked so hard to teach this group when they seemed so disinterested and ignorant in international politics. Omirbek had a sophisticated and complicated explanation of and rationale for how and why he taught the way he did, and it was tied to his larger interpretation of the higher educational issues of the Kyrgyz Republic. He argued in one interview that the instructional problem of the university derived from the historical background of the country, which might be correctable but would take years and years to remediate: I have been working on those issues of higher education, and I have realized that education has started changing; but it is not one day change, you cannot make it change in one day. It needs time, but I cannot say how much time it needs. I have been in a state university, and I’ve been in a private [university] plus an American [university], and it is a huge difference between them. The first thing is this university and [my] Osh university is a totally different system. For instance, teachers come [there] and most teaching is based on mere theories. So we had students to write class papers [from] books based on theories which worked before during the Soviet times. So [students] are [still] writing and listening to old stories. But, we cannot blame this on our state, or because of our university or because of persons who teach. We cannot blame anybody, because this is complex system. Teachers come to the class and tell all the old theories and [use] old reading materials which might be not relevant today, especially to modern standards, international standards.

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Omirbek opined that learning environments and instructional styles and strategies used in international universities were far superior to those to be seen in state universities in Kyrgyzstan, including BNU: In the United States, they come, and it is a different environment. There the professor comes and asks questions about [material] students were reading. They profit from the professor. It’s huge; it is very different. [American] professors focus more on topics these days. So we talk about today’s issues and try to make things relevant with the international, too…And, in Kyrgyzstan, it is another culture, we could say. It is a method of teaching [still] based on the Soviet type where instructor dictated information [just] to repeat and remember. But we cannot work on our own ideas, our own way of conversation, and this delays us from understanding the subject, I think.

Omirbek, however, believed that cultural and social problems of the country impact upon the teaching and learning process and that teacher expectations need to be sensitive student cultural and psychological differences, particularly to those from poor and/or rural backgrounds: Oh, the situation is complex and the students are different, and the first thing is you need to understand students’ psychology, their needs, what they need. And [my] course is really hard for them as a subject. But I try to make international affairs [helpful] to understand the world that the students live in… what happens in the country, in the region, and in the world. They need to understand what is going on. Plus, [there is] a student problem I was facing, [some] are interested, but they live in not very good economic conditions— about 30%, I would say. And they [sometimes] say “I cannot go to class.” But compared to September, things have changed; I see a little progress. And the third-year students are [now] reading some materials, I think. I realized that the students did not have such an experience before, and they did not have a writing course. I went to their curriculum; they now have a writing course, but students cannot write…I looked at the subjects they are taught and they do not coincide these days with [academic] needs. We just do not have “essays” in Kyrgyzstan, [we] call it sochineniye [composition], and they say just write [from memory]. Plus, when they use facts, they misinterpret. This is a big problem: the majority of students cannot write [due to] lack of [school] experience.

I was curious how Omirbek turned his empathy for uneducated or undereducated students in my WS group into a teaching strategy. Not surprisingly, he not only held (by my estimation) low standards for performance, but even then allowed for negotiations to happen when those low standards were not met. I pursued this question with reference to a midterm exam he gave and the scores students earned upon it. The exam included 25 multiple-choice questions and a short essay. Each part was to be worth 50 points, with a total possible of 100. On the one hand, Omirbek claimed that such an objective test was rarely given by the faculty in the FFL; on the other

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hand, students were allowed to use notes and copied articles in class even to answer the multiple choice questions; and a total of 30 out of 100 would enable a student to pass the exam! Fewer than half of the students actually completed the essay (maximum 2 pages in length) as a part of the 90 minute exam. They were allowed to finish the essay and turn it in later in the week. The “25” multiple-choice questions actually numbered only 22. When grades were announced 2 weeks later, every one of the 15 actually taking the exam had passed. Three of them got a “5” for scoring above 65 points (out of 100). Two students did not take the test. Nor had they appeared in class during the 6 weeks I was there. I am pretty certain they never had to take this test at all to pass the course; Omirbek confided that he used other means to gauge student progress anyway. Omirbek argued that a main objective of his in giving the test was to find out if students were actually reading the take-home sheets he had duplicated for them and if they were taking notes in class. He stated that the biggest problem for many students was that they could only articulate their own opinion on political affairs, and were not able to see other sides of an argument. In an earlier exam, he found that students usually gave their own opinions about the issues they had heard him talk about, and turn to other students for ideas. He wanted them to instead locate competing arguments from his handouts and lectures. So, he did not mind if they shared information as long as it came from his presentations and their readings rather than from their group-mates. He thus did not tell them to use notes to answer questions during the exam, but eventually allowed them to do so. Omirbek carefully explained to the students the logic of the course and the protocols he would use in evaluating student performance. Having learned about a syllabus from his international university experiences, he had incorporated some formal objectives and evaluation languages into a syllabus, which was rarely presented to students in any other FFL class. Although he did stick with his announced topics, he did not actually use announced protocols to award grades in the end. This was typical in the several other courses I attended over the two years of my fieldwork. Omirbek’s grades were based mostly on student attitude and value-added dimensions rather than on absolute or even relative objective performance: Before the students begin their class, I always inform that there will be a midterm. I wrote it in the syllabus what would happen. “First, for the midterm I expect some performance. Then I will let you write bonus papers, but these bonus papers it will involve essays. The [midterm] questions will derive from the [assigned] literature.” I use the first experience—multiple-choice—in the formulation to set up the papers; maybe two maybe three papers. It depends on the student. But at the moment, I am pushing them to submit the papers, and now about 80% have submitted the papers—first papers. The first paper,

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only 80% [have been] submitted. And [only] half of them have started to be able to explain another side [of an issue or dispute]. The problem is they still do not correctly know how to use citations. But still, I think it’s a good performance.

At the end of the day, to pass with high grades in Omirbek’s class often meant they had to develop good rapport with him outside of class. What they did in class (or if they did not come to class at all) could be negotiated later. He would “push” students to write papers that he would carefully guide so that they could see the other side of issues he already tried to present during his lectures. Unfortunately, most teachers at the FFL did not have the kind of time or the usable office in which to mentor students as Omirbek did. Omirbek did not believe that Western standards and expectations could really be used in the current Kyrgyz context, though he personally valued them. Yet he was critical of teachers who did not work daily and weekly with students and only negotiated with them at the end of the semester: But if I graded [now], I would give grades today only for participation and performance in class, plus how often they talk to me in my office hours. [See], if students are coming now [after performing poorly on his test and assignments], and we have very good—quite normal relations, I never [demand] a deadline. If they come, I will try to push them to write some papers. 70% [of students] are working these days in Kyrgyzstan, [so] even if [we] used a syllabus in the education system, for another class maybe different method will be approached; but for this class I will be using this grading system. Why? Because I do not see any advantage of a system [like ours] where you will come [to teachers] at the end of the year [where teachers] will ask some [new] questions before they give you a mark in their journal. I want to grade students according to what they have been doing and how much progress they have made.

Omirbek concluded my final interview with him by reflecting further on what it would take to change the academic culture of the university. He believed that this was a much larger problem than the university itself, for many students come unprepared by their secondary schools for academic work and only after some years in the university any gains are to be seen: The problem is that higher education in Kyrgyzstan system is resistant [to change], so the students are passive and the professors are also passive. Plus, they [the professors] do not possess integrity. The problem also has some correlation with the state economy and situation in the country. But when students can learn how to achieve their aims, to realize what their potentials are, and to learn methods to achieve their certain aims [this] will gradually lead them to learn how to communicate with other people and to increase economic development.

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MANEUVERING BETWEEN THE ADVERTISED AND REAL WORLDS Bishkek New University claims to be a standard bearer for new and innovative state universities in the Kyrgyz Republic and to represent all the best of the national higher education system. Yet the observations and sources offered in this book clearly suggest that there is diminished quality and integrity within this institution and the larger system. This does not mean there are no valiant teachers or administrators in this university or in the many others. It only means these instructors and administrators are trying to do the best they can within a challenged academic culture and despite the social, economic and cultural difficulties they find themselves facing. The head of the Faculty of Foreign Languages surely fits into this category, as one who had both an academic passion and a commitment to contributing toward higher education improvement in Kyrgyzstan. At the same time, she understood that to challenge what had emerged as the larger higher education culture in the republic would deprive her of the chance to do what she could. The politics of higher education in the country is far above the level of deans and directors. Kunduz, the young teacher profiled earlier in the chapter, had multiple complaints about BNU, which had led her to seek and find better working conditions outside the university. She remained a part-timer in the FFL because of her high regard for the dean. She believed that Kanikei, as well as most teachers in her faculty, were victims of the politics of the institution and in the larger country: You know, one of the reasons I stayed here this time after they cut my salary was because of her. I respect her, and I like her. Because, you know, she is a very good person. And, as a scientist in her field, she knows everything. For example she is my supervisor, and when I come with some questions to her, she is frankly very clear. I was very interested in[obtaining another] degree and that is why I began to work on it with her.

Despite all of the teaching and learning issues at Bishkek New University and the Faculty of Foreign Languages, the enthusiasm, optimism, and openness of the FFL head seemed boundless. She had a plan for what was needed in a newly independent country where the codification and expansion of the Kyrgyz language was seen as a national priority. Kanikei believed that an important emergent need for scholars here is to learn how to translate Kyrgyz into English and vice versa rather than using Russian as the medium of exchange. Such a need was also growing in the secondary schools where more and more teaching was being done in Kyrgyz, and many foreign language teachers would have to be able to work with students who were ethnic Kyrgyz, spoke Kyrgyz, and were not fluent Russian speakers. And, math and

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science courses in some of the more advanced schools were using English materials. This called—she believed—for more and more specialists who could negotiate all three languages. So, she created a Translation Studies specialization that was approved by the education ministry and first offered at her previous university in the south. Soon after that, Kanikei won an international scholarship to America. There she decided that cultural studies and not only foreign languages would be popular and useful in a country seeking to connect with the rest of the world: And I soon as I returned, I applied for a World Studies program; it was important to study any culture, not only American, but any culture, useful for each other, to develop friendship, to understand each other, and I applied myself to open this program. Some [in the education ministry] were against it. “Where will they work?” “What will they do?” “There is no such program even in the USA itself.”

Kanikei was not allowed to open this program in her former university, nor could she convince the education ministry that her other idea—a journalism program—should be opened and would be marketable. She decided the latter would be an interesting effort as she was exposed in the late 1990s to the burgeoning English language literature and magazines appearing now in Kyrgyzstan. She thought her university should prepare a new generation of specialists who could be able to write, translate and publish bi-lingual journals, magazines, newspapers, and books. Tied up in the government bureaucracy in her former university, she did not get the chance to create these programs there. However, she got an opportunity to act on “her dreams” when her senior university administrator was hired to a senior administrative job at BNU. He invited Kanikei to follow him to Bishkek and eventually she was able to create these three new specializations. Like others whose voices have been heard in this book, Kanikei was torn. She was from the South but decided for the sake of her family that more opportunities would exist in Bishkek. Her relatives agreed with her that the possibilities were fewer for her kids and the corruption worse in Osh than in Bishkek, and thus she brought her husband and her teenage children to Bishkek: And I thought about my children, and thought it will be a good possibility for them, for their life, to realize themselves. I said let me talk about this with my husband, and when I went to one of his relatives here, they supported me. “Really what would do in Osh; what will your children do in Osh?” “Where can they find job there, because the corruption there is even higher than here?” So, I came here.

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I asked Kanikei about the academic culture at BNU numerous times between 2007 and 2009. In her previous testimony, she expressed disappointment that students did not work hard to study at the university where their parents are sacrificing to send them. She opined, however, that times have changed. Students now have different learning opportunities than they did 30 or 40 years ago when she was a student. They are now more based upon things to experience and learn outside of class than within. She believed her programs were doing well in providing experiences for dedicated students, and they could still get a quality education if they put in the effort. Kanikei was particularly proud that she had been able to find foreign teachers and connect them with her students, although some of these foreign “teachers” were fleeting figures seen here and there for a month or two and often lacked training in her three specializations: You see, I am happy for the students over the past two to three years, because a lot of foreign teachers are here, and the results are that students can learn something. And I am glad for [students] because the foreigners are very enthusiastic. [If] foreigners would like to organize something, students are always ready. These foreigners are always with students—they like to be here. And that is good, because in other universities where there are no such [foreign] teachers, the students have no active life. Teachers are also hard working; they do all their best in order to involve students in social activities. It is very important for [students], you know. They are young people and like to have fun, to have something interesting, anyway. That is why I would like to have maybe five more students like Nurbeck, and that would be enough for the whole university. You see?

Yet I was perplexed; any way Kanikei described it, there were still many students who did not come to classes, or when they were there, did not actively participate. Like the teachers mentioned earlier, she argued that even though her program theoretically required attendance, many missing students had more pressing matters than to come to class every day. Some of these she encouraged to enroll in the Internet Academy distance education program if they felt unable to make up or negotiate missed classes with their teachers. How distance programs can work with students who do not usually have internet access and with an institution where computers are often compromised by viruses and teachers already have full-time teaching responsibilities in regular classes during the day was another mystery I could not directly study. But speaking with conviction, Kanikei explained: You know students—not only at our university—now are working everywhere [like restaurants]; or they work some other places. Of course it is very difficult to combine everything…And they are too tired to come to the classes. That was the reason of our opening of distance education; so if they cannot study as a day time students, daytime courses, they can get a distance education

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by email…But some of our students are lazy. Pedagogues divide [them] into three groups: the first, students who are really good students who are willing to know and who never miss classes, and they work hard. Maybe they even graduated from the village; from the country[side]. And after some years, their level of knowledge [equals] our best students who graduate from specialized [urban] schools. And the next group are the students that know that they will receive a diploma anyway, because they are from a city. They know Russian well, and may not or cannot come to their classes. But, anyway they receive their diploma. They know a “three” is [only] “satisfactory,” but it does not matter for them; the diploma is [all that] is important.

Next Kanikei discussed those students who either cannot learn or will not try to learn in the university, and sometimes they are one and the same. The abandonment of actual learning standards at FFL is tellingly illustrated in this anecdote; but it also suggests a common reason why a diploma is understood as more important than learned skills: We had a girl—I forget her name; Dasha? She studied here for five years, and as a student, she was not bright, but she was very diligent. She did not miss any classes, and when [a foreign visitor] came, they spent all their time together. When I asked her, “Dasha, why are spending so much time here, where will you end up working?” And she said “in Dordoi.” And then I asked her: “For Dordoi you spent five years here, to sit in that market?’ “No”, she said. “After I collect some money, I will go to the US and then I’ll learn [English] there.” You see, she found some work [in America] and she [got] an invitation letter. And she is there now, without any English skills. I hope that she will learn there, but she has a diploma, you see, because she never missed classes; she did her best, but maybe she was not capable for the language learning.

The experience of Dasha at the FFL conflicts of course with all the advertised entrance requirements and learning standards of BNU and the higher education system in the country. Dasha could not speak English when she was admitted; she apparently did not learn much during her five years in the program, and somehow she passed all her classes and the state exit exams, and received her diploma. Rather than suggesting this was an exceptional case or that it should not have happened, Kanikei implied that this was not uncommon. Dasha paid her fees and came to class and made no waves. More importantly, there were other students who did not come to class and who could not be expelled from university. Perhaps Dasha learned something of use during those five years at the FFL, while the others did not: [Dasha] might have learned something, but she was not so smart as a student. She was shy; she was very touchy and did not say anything very openly; maybe she would cite some verses or some lines. She might do that, and get only “satisfactory with a minus” [3-] see? And she paid in time, everything; no

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES • 137 debts to the Internet Academy. The main thing is she was always in a class. And I told her if she was a very hard working girl, maybe she will achieve some results. [Meanwhile] there are some lazy boys who do not come in time, or who are the sons of the rich people, and they did not mind paying the money. They [also] did not try to study, and they did not work hard. So, we—how can I say—we kicked them out of the university. [But] after some time they got their administrative signature [from higher up in the university] to be students once more, and we [admitted] them. Later, we again kicked them out, but then they came back again. Some students have been here maybe for more than five years like this. Genuinely I think most here are hardworking students, but, there are some lazy bones. But you see when everything depends on money, and on the students…There are seventeen institutes of foreign languages in Bishkek. And they can go to another university who will admit them; that is why we try to keep our own students, and to do all our best to give them knowledge. But it depends on them, too, how the students will behave in classes.

Although Kanikei could be candid about challenges posed by underprepared and non-attending students, she was more guarded with regard to criticism of the university and its operation. As a respected academician and experienced university instructor and senior administrator, many doors were open to her to teach in other universities, sit on academic counsels, evaluate other programs, etc., all for some additional salary. And she took full advantage of these possibilities, likely working 10 to 12 hours per day over the years I interacted with her. In the several Kyrgyz universities where I have worked, chairs, deans, and rectors are respected as well as feared among the junior ranks. Few will challenge a senior administrator if they want to keep their position or options open for teaching at other universities. Regarding instructors leaving her faculty, Kanikei’s position was nuanced. She knew her teachers were underpaid and overworked, but she would not publicly fight for them. When salaries were cut to cover the university shortfall in 2008, she would not join the teachers who demanded satisfaction from the university rector. At the same time, she did not hold it against her teachers who found other or better jobs; in fact, she encouraged them to take them, even realizing it would negatively affect her unit: I do not know. I say, you are welcome if you go to the best place, if it is good for you and your salary situation that [you] grow further, further, and further. If it is a next step for them, no problem. You know, we have one [former] teacher who works for [the US] Peace Corps now, and [another] who [previously] worked with the Peace Corps. And we have one teacher last year…and now she also works for a bank. Let them do [those] jobs, too, because it is not compulsory to be a teacher. To be a teacher is from God, from nature; not all the people can be a teacher; they can be in different places; that is natural. Let them go further, and earn a lot of money, they can do that. No problem.

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Concerning academic standards, I had two sorts of questions for Kanikei. One was where the standards came from that the university was supposedly holding students to. I was particularly interested with how her programs in Western Studies and World Journalism were created, considering that almost none of her faculty was trained in these areas, nor was there such curriculum development competence in the national education ministry. Kanikei informed me that the basis of each specialization was foreign language study, enhanced with disciplinary content in Western Studies and Journalism as such programs were available on the internet or from one of the private universities, adapted by them to the Kyrgyz standards. This was then offered in elective classes at FFL. Kanikei showed me the official learning program for her approved specializations, compiled almost entirely by herself and involving academic areas she was not trained in. To have these approved, she had to approach the right person at the right time in the education ministry. Playing ball with the education ministry is always a good strategy if you want to have programs certified as well as to be asked to participate in paid consulting and checking committees; it is still a small country after all. Kanikei was proud to explain her learning plan: We know English well [but] Translation Studies subjects are quite different, you see: English, Latin, writing, outside reading, practical phonetics, practical grammar; and here—TOEFL, foreign language, introduction to Western Studies; and this—Kyrgyz, history, and informatics; and here [reading the plan]. We took them from [one of the private universities]. We have the right to make some changes, so we added some more subjects like this course [on the plan]…The difference between the [other universities’ program] and [ours] is basically hours, nothing more. And then I looked through and also I checked other Western Studies programs on the Internet, together with Kunduz…[The education ministry] trusts me. They are reliable people, but you see, sometimes it depends on the chair of that commission; they change from time to time.

I also noticed that the FFL plans in World Journalism and Western Studies called for teaching several subjects that had to be hard to find teachers for. Where would they find an international journalism instructor or a specialist in American government among their ranks who could instruct students in English? Kanikei told me that she was hoping and planning for foreigners with some sort of relevant expertise to voluntarily appear at the right time to perform these duties. Otherwise, she would have to recruit passable substitutes (like Omirbek) to pitch in. In the end, though, all the emphasis on instructional hours and on academic skills and on standards mandated by the education ministry seemed secondary for Kanikei. How to teach—how to interact with students and measure their progress and deal with their missing classes—rather than what to teach in the

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sense of subjects and hours was more critical for Kanikei. She agreed that in many cases, negotiations between teachers and students and minimizing stated requirements were possible, if not the norm. Omirbek had basically a similar perspective, but for him it was value added rather than absolute performance as the key to a student’s grade. For Kanikei, it was practical experience that should be the aim of a university education in the 21st century. How would they make up for academic work not done? Teachers were the key, and the extra work they would agree to do on behalf of students who did not meet stated classroom goals. Since teachers were already overworked and underpaid, such a strategy has failure or corruption written all over it. But, enabling the best students to basically skip the last year of study to take a job while still obtaining a diploma, seemed more than acceptable to Kanikei, and likely for students and parents as well: Maybe teachers will give them to read extra material and answer to questions [later]. It depends on the teacher; how they organize. For example, if they don’t attend class, I make them do extra reading on that topic that they missed. Sometimes they will need their home readings to write something, or to read more pages. Because English is divided into grammar, phonetics, conversational English, lexics, etc. There is not only one teacher for English, there are five teachers, [but] a main goal is that the students can speak by the fourth course; that is our result [aim]. Sometimes [academic] material is not relevant outside the classroom, and some students work some other places or on some project. And in this case we allow or senior students to work, [since] there is no guarantee [from us] to find them jobs.

A Student and Her Family, Bishkek”

CHAPTER 7

CONCLUDING REMARKS AND INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE KYRGYZ HIGHER EDUCATION SCENE

My research finds that what passes for a “university,” what it means to be “student,” and what it means to “study” in Kyrgyzstan have all be redefined over the past 20 years, and that all of these redefinitions are driven by contemporary political, economic, and cultural factors. Those who are “students” here now are not the same sorts of young people who were in higher education institutions previously, and the academic culture of the “university” is far different now than before. Meanwhile, government officials and university rectors proclaim widely that their policies and institutions approximate or are moving to approximate international standards. Given the great financial and philosophical difficulties national universities in the country currently face, it would not be fair to hold these institutions to any worldwide standards they proclaim to admire; their circumstances are inLost in Transition: Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic, pages 141–160 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing 141 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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deed difficult. However, much of the movement toward international models and standards appears more rhetorical than actual. What would it mean were the state universities to adopt international reform and improvement strategies were they interested and able? As it happens, there have been some significant ideas, critiques, and models related to higher education restructuring in and nearby to Kyrgyzstan in the past decade which suggest what could be done were there real interest or leadership. In addition to critiques and proposals for higher education reform issued by outside agencies, data collected for this project underscores that a number of globally connected universities in the country already do operate in ways that the state universities proclaim interest in. Students in these universities usually give them very high marks. In pages ahead I briefly overview missions, programs, and infrastructures of several of these institutions to see if and how they have earned this student appreciation. Finally, I will conclude with the geopolitics of such places, since all of them exist here as outposts of and for the cultural values of the nations which fund them. Since some of the findings in this research may appear critical, I expect a charge of being culturally biased and insensitive, particularly by those who vigorously defend the national status quo in Kyrgyz higher education and announce that they are seriously committed to joining international higher education space. My counterargument is that since most state universities discussed in this work claim to be open and accepting of international technologies, information, and models, they are all fair game for investigation into the success and sincerity of their efforts; after all, it has now been twenty years since most of them have been seeking to out-internationalize each other’s reputation in the competition for more students.

SUMMARIZING OBSERVATIONS: MANIFEST VERSUS LATENT FUNCTIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY What do we know now about universities and students in Kyrgyzstan based upon this research as well as those other sources considered in this book? For one thing, there remains a healthy demand for access to higher education among students and parents, even though there are growing criticisms of quality and understanding that what students actually study may not lead clearly to a job. Meanwhile, despite proclamations about improved quality, information access and meeting world standards, most Kyrgyz university quality indicators would be in decline if there were any external ones to be applied. And, although universities retain formal and highly regimented and compulsory attendance policies from Soviet times, actual attendance

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in classrooms and other learning environments is informally understood as an option rather than as a requirement. The public seems to acknowledge that standards are down and corruption is endemic, students and parents are willing to put up with this while parents search for some avenue to reward their children for previous success in school, to keep them from having to go to work prematurely, and in the hope that some kind of decent employment requiring a diploma might be found in future. Those students and parents who really want and expect to learn complex professional and academic skills either try to move to institutions of higher quality if they can afford this or come to understand they will have to study privately in addition to taking university classes and paying what are, for many, exorbitant tuitions. Student perceptions of the university that made lack of rigorous standards acceptable could clearly be found in both survey results and interviews presented in previous chapters. Few were able to articulate instrumental visions of the meaning of higher education. Many of them had heard from their parents that receiving “good knowledge” was important on its own and that receiving such knowledge was prestigious. They seemed to think that knowledge is something delivered to them by teachers at a time and place decided by the university; they less frequently understood university as a place where they would have the opportunity to independently acquire information and knowledge for some instrumental purpose. Given the belief that “studying” was really “listening and taking notes,” it was no surprise that some students never thought undertaking university study could be onerous and difficult. For them, university proved to be more a place to visit with friends and have free space and time to absorb cultural offerings of the city center under the sponsorship of their parents who were paying their fees. Many understood that receiving a diploma from the university was necessary but not sufficient for future employment; they knew that family and friendship connections were also crucial—or more crucial—to this end. This chapter summary needs to be tempered by remembering that the samples of surveyed and interviewed students drawn for this project were a convenience sample—all of them (15 student groups at five universities) were connected one way or another with international and foreign language programs. The other methodological issue to keep in mind is that the case study presented was accomplished at one of the newer state universities and programs. It was not undertaken at inter-governmental, private,or other state institutions with longer histories. Nothing is quite as it seems in Kyrgyz higher education. Official rules are often not adhered to in practice. Mandatory attendance and seatwork requirements are not really mandatory. Students report that they can work out deals with their instructors regarding classes missed exams failed, and

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instructors report that even when they don’t want to make a deal, they are forced to from above. By the third or fourth year of their studies, many students spend more time working or looking for work in Bishkek than they spend at their universities where they are supposed to be in daily attendance. This is cautiously acknowledged and even informally encouraged by university deans who understand these student priorities. Administrators confide that such informal arrangements work for the benefit of all, allowing students to get what they want from what is offered, while providing instructors and administrators with employment within their professional interest areas—as long as tuition dollars are coming in. Unfortunately, the teachers who labor hard in the academic trenches of Kyrgyz universities typically get the short end of the tuition stick, as higher up administrators are able to conceal and pocket some of the tuition. Universities that have been allowed to partially privatize are ever in the hunt for new international students. In the case of BNU, many of these now come from Asian countries to the south where universities are more expensive, their entrance and academic standards are more rigorously enforced, and universities have not been allowed to proliferate. Distance learning is a growing industry, and its outcomes are even harder to inspect and certify. Even the education ministry is now curious about distance education programs, and frequently announces a crackdown on them. On the other hand, corruption within the education ministry and/or good connections between any given university and higher-ups in government circles are likely to enable crafty rectors to circumvent inspection of curricular programs, including distance learning. These problems are all related to the fact that there is no independent quality assurance or programmatic information system in the country not overseen by the education ministry. Neither parents or students have access to process or outcomes involved with university attendance until after they have paid tuition and enrolled. The easiest observation of the contradiction of what is claimed about higher education in Kyrgyzstan today versus what is actually happening returns to the “manifest” versus “latent” sociological construct introduced in the beginning of this study (Merton, 1968). Specifically, what passes for higher education at the level of the official and the formal (the manifest function) underplays, underreports, and/or conceals much of its unofficial and informal dynamics, or the “latent” functions of the university. Students’ parents claim to want universities to instill “good knowledge” in the children they send there, and the universities claim they do—a primary “manifest” goal. However, as sources confided, a major reason why lots of students are enrolled at university these days is “because there is no place else to go.” So, the “latent” function of the university is to keep young people occupied with “studies” and out of the workforce, slowly maturing and seeking employment rather than being dumped into a stagnant national economy

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at age of 17. Another “latent” function of the university (revealed in interviews) is to allow rural kids to move into the city and not stay in the village, and to keep the young generation off the streets and out of politics overall. Since the Kyrgyz government has developed few other strategies for incorporating young people into productive young adulthood, it is complicit in allowing rectors to promise to teach young people things they might need to know to gain a good job. National policy argues that universities are necessary for teaching the skills and knowledge required in the knowledgebased economy which Kyrgyzstan wants to have. But there are no national strategies for linking what is proclaimed or “manifested” to what actually occurs. There are no placement offices connecting graduates to the world of work, no published data on what graduates actually do when they leave, and few if any international standards that graduates can show they have met when they receive their diplomas. Universities worldwide have various “latent” functions. But the gap between the manifest and the latent is probably larger in Kyrgyzstan than in most other places. Unfortunately, failing to deliver upon the academic quality promised in the system is leading to a new cycle of academic marginality. Many of the students I surveyed and interviewed never realized that entering the university would increase their study requirements after secondary school. Most seemed to believe that going to the university was a gift from their parents and an opportunity to “go free.” Some of them were surprised to find their secondary schools and school teachers of higher quality than at the university. They soured quickly on lectures and seminars covering subjects they already knew or were not interested in. In language programs I visited, there were instructors holding the same level university diploma that they were teaching toward, having graduated from a very similar or even the same program a couple of years earlier. Add to this the fact that Kyrgyz culture yet values elders and males above young people and women, incoming university students who were expecting to be “given” knowledge by experienced professors confront the unsettling fact that it is primarily young women who comprise the professorial workforce in language and international programs. In the absence of serious academic possibilities, many students did enjoy exercising newfound freedoms in the company they did not have before coming to university. They enjoy exercising these new freedoms in the company of other group mates, consuming and being part of a growing international youth culture, and being in the cultural center of the city. Becoming a student confers these privileges as long as they remain in this status. By the third year of “study,” however, students who somehow still believed that a diploma they would receive would help them find a job had begun to understand that this would not easily happen and began to search for work during the very same days and times they were supposed to be in class. And

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this is all done with the blessing of those who were formally mandated to require and monitor class attendance. So, the cycle of student under-preparedness, unrealistic expectations about academic work, under-qualified teaching, overlooked classroom absences, students enabled to work or go free while negotiating assignments individually with teachers—all create a climate of marginality which will take decades at best to overcome.

INTERNATIONAL OPINIONS AND REFORM SUGGESTIONS Due to the various “latent” university functions in Kyrgyzstan, academic quality has taken a back-burner to enrollment growth. And, since paretns consider sending their children to university as almost a holy duty, what incentive is there for universities to become more selective or curricularly innovative? Some observers of higher education development in the former USSR claim that most rested on their laurels in the past two decades rather than being concerned with improvement (Heyneman, Anderson, & Nuraliyeva, 2007; Ospian, 2009). They liken dynamics of services provided in higher education to classic “rent-seeking” behavior described in economics (Krueger, 1974). Consumers hungry for university degrees—due to their former utility and prestige—are willing to pay any price for a diploma that only the universities are given the right to bestow. Universities in such a system have no need to change or improve; to the contrary, they often become worse and increasingly corrupt, since access to the university and obtaining diplomas are increasingly bought and sold, with no guarantee of quality or utility. As long as those who run the universities set their own agendas and the national governments mandate no compelling reforms to the system, such corruption and inefficiency will remain in the system. The rent-seeking charge can be easily found in Central Asia, especially in at least three of the five former Central Asian republics of the USSR; Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, where there has been higher education expansion. For all the talk of joining the international higher education community, few if any international standards trickling down to the classroom level in the universities I worked in between 2003 and 2009. Their problems related to quality are related to budgets, organization, and philosophy. The education ministry—which in Kyrgyzstan controls both secondary and higher education—does not have its own budget, and has always been under-funded (Mertaugh, 2004; Shagdar, 2006). Secondary education garnered much international investment and many pedagogical training opportunities, since such sponsors feared national calamity with any collapse of public secondary education (DeYoung, Reeves, & Valyayeva, 2006). But the international

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donor community did not come to the financial assistance of higher education, believing that most costs of non-compulsory studies should be paid for by users rather the government (Musabaeva, 2008). International agencies working with higher education have mostly been advisory. The rationale for this is that universities and the education ministry are not well equipped to reform curricula and standards on their own, thus acknowledging a “capacity gap” in the education sector and educational leadership similar to those seen in other public sectors of most former Soviet states (Heyneman, 1998; Cox, 2006). This “capacity gap” coupled with university decentralization explains how university rectors became more influential. Their increased power over the past two decades is also explained by the fact that education ministers here usually come from the ranks of university administrators; and return to run universities when they are routinely replaced. Since virtually every Kyrgyz university claims to want to be part of the international higher education community—to exchange ideas, students and faculty globally—it seems fair to investigate how open they are or have been to new ideas related to curricula and organization. If they are really open, by now they should be pretty far along in adopting and accommodating various international administrative and teaching protocols that would make them internationally attractive. Bishkek New University certainly professes such intent, underscoring that it is a different kind of institution, providing unique opportunities for global connections and innovative technologies previously found only internationally. Unfortunately, my fieldwork at found little evidence of this. Meanwhile, there have been several externally sponsored projects to research, advise, and ultimately improve higher education in the region; a region which shares similar educational histories and contemporary problems. Among them, for example, are a study of current higher education problems in Tajikistan and proposals for curricular reform; ranking of university quality in Kazakhstan; and creating a national scholarship test for university entrance in Kyrgyzstan. A common complaint about the former Soviet education and higher education model was that school and university curricula were frequently overloaded and redundant with little curricular alignment within and between subjects. And when a new subject was to be included, it was pretty much just added to what previously existed. My FFL students were not happy that in their first and second years they had to re-study much of the same language program they earlier studied in secondary school. Curricular efficiency and cost effectiveness are key issues addressed in Western schools and universities. They continuously assess learning outcomes as a foundation upon which later learning should occur. This frees students who have already mastered basic subjects to proceed to differentiated and advanced

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subject content. This was not the case in the former USSR or in independent Central Asian states. Inefficiencies in higher education were the focus of the Tajikistan Higher Education Baseline Study, co-sponsored by the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the Tajik education ministry in 2006 (ERSU, 2006). This survey found (as in Kyrgyzstan) that highly qualified teachers left the university system in the 1990s, that the majority (64%) of university instructors were of junior rank, and only 8% had advanced degrees and training. About 26% of the faculty were under age 30, and 10% were pensioners. Also, as is the case in Kyrgyzstan, most students were studying in such subjects as Philology/Languages (26%), Law (19%), and Economics (15%); but only 18% in Math and Natural Sciences. The number of universities and enrollments in Tajikistan, though, only doubled since national independence, compared to Kyrgyzstan where it almost quadrupled. The study was based upon a large nationwide survey of university instructors and administrators, with questions concentrating on issues of leadership and system reform. Over one-third of the 880 respondents reported they would be willing to leave their university positions immediately were they offered a more lucrative position outside, and 39% said they would at least pause to consider such an opportunity. Regarding university curricula, it was found that much of the mandated university subjects in humanities (national languages, national history, ecology, etc.) basically repeated content from the last two years of secondary education. Instructors also reported corruption and bribery was rampant in their universities because many poorly prepared secondary schools had been admitted but were willing to pay tuition, while the faculty who taught them received below poverty salaries. Forty-seven percent (47%) of respondents reported that “personal connections” or other forms corruption interfered with their work, and another 11% claimed that unit leaders often failed to take responsibility for policy decisions that were supposed to make. Based upon these results, ERSU made the typical calls for reducing university corruption and bribery. My fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan found similar trends, and there are similar calls about fighting corruption from the education ministry, other government agencies and international donors. With regard to curricular duplication and alignment issues, ERSU advised that joining the market economy would require more carefully aligning university specializations with labor-market needs. But greater depth in technological, professional, and scientific fields could only be incorporated into the university if and when competency in general curricular subjects as Tajik history and languages become prerequisites to university entrance and not subjects that were re-taught. OSI, which underwrote most of the ERSU study, has a long history of espousing “critical thinking skills” as a must for full participation in the

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emerging global economy and society. Under this influence, ERSU called for introducing more active learning into teaching: Today, modern teaching methods include interactive training methods and critical thinking strategies. They are necessary for students’ independent thinking development with special focus [on] self-organizing, self-training and self-education. The objective of modern teaching methods is to activate cognitive processes among students during study. Higher education institutions should provide students with education that nurtures well informed and deeply motivated citizens capable of critical thinking, analyzing public problems, solving problems facing society, and taking on social responsibilities (ERSU, 2006, p. 83).

In the end, few if any of the curricular problems identified by the ERSU have been incorporated into Tajik higher education, likely for the same financial and “rent-seeking” reasons as they have not be addressed in Kyrgyzstan. Yet the study does illustrate how a university system might really join international higher education space were there real interest in so doing. OSI was also involved in a proposed university ranking plan for universities in Kazakhstan (Briller & Iskakova, 2004), which represents yet another way Kyrgyz universities might be reformed were there authorities interested in making significant changes to the system. Kazakh higher education officials—like their counterparts in Kyrgyzstan—continuously profess interest in joining international education space. However, international observers argued that a proliferation of public and private higher education institutions detracted them from focusing on quality. Project coordinators (Briller & Iskakova) introduced the proliferation versus quality challenge in Kazakhstan: Due to a certain level of decentralization [after independence], public institutions were able to open new “fashionable” degree programs, like economics, law, accounting, foreign languages, computer programming, etc. The programs had to be licensed and accredited. Simultaneously, the number of new private institutions of higher education is now twice that of the number of public ones, and the[se] also want to be licensed and accredited to compete for the students with older public institutions. Thus, the load for the accrediting bodies [became] too big, and the process of accreditation became uncontrollable and subject to corruption. The Kazakh Ministry of Education and Science bank of experts is limited, and as a result, accreditation [became] an issue of a small group of appointed experts getting bribes and [one can assume] sharing those with some officials in the Ministry for approving questionable programs and institutions. (Briller & Iskakova, 2004)

Against this background, OSI convened thirty senior administrators from Kazakh universities and the education ministry to discuss and develop quality criteria for national university assessment. The OSI University Rank-

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ing scheme was envisioned as a collaborative effort, and the project started with an introduction of international Higher Education Institutions ranking systems as seen in the US, Asia, Great Britain and Germany. US News and World Report, for example, ranks American universities on seven criteria, and most of these criteria are also used by Asia Week to evaluate Asian universities. Among the variables are student retention rates, faculty quality, student selectivity, university financial resources, alumni giving, graduation rate performance (percentages of those who actually finish with degrees), and peer assessments by administrators of the quality of competing universities. In Germany, the Center for Higher Education Development (CHE) has rankings for research quality as provided by student, faculty and staff opinion surveys. Rankings in Germany by the magazine Stern are based on such things as the number of computers per student in an institution, student-professor ratios, and satisfaction surveys of students and professors. Wirtschaftswoche magazine surveys personnel managers from different companies regarding their perceived quality of German university graduates. As it was found during the OSI project, the biggest challenge for education officials was to get them to agree that rankings could and should be conducted by non-government organizations: For the Ministry of Education and Science bureaucrats, it was very hard to let go of a project that would contribute so much power to the Ministry, and for some university officials, it was hard to believe that an outsider should conduct the assessments. However, after lengthy discussion, the participants agreed to an independent organization that would manage the process, the Almaty Institute of Assessment and Evaluation. (Briller & Iskakova, 2004)

Although there were a variety of philosophical and technical issues in comparing universities in Kazakhstan, like size, comprehensiveness, and location, there was some early progress in this project. The Assessment Institute did conduct some initial work and a number of universities eventually were compared and several tentatively emerged as better than the others, but the project stalled without an official national ranking and without consensus that the ranking project should be continued. OSI found university non-compliance became systemic as some rectors began to see that their institutions would come out on the low end of the stick: A lot of universities, especially public ones, declined to provide their data and claimed numerous reasons for that. First of all, the ranking was “not authorized” by the Ministry of Education; second, most of those universities did not have reliable data management systems; finally, they were not ready for objective assessments and benchmarking and were afraid they might be exposed and lose of the attractiveness to the public if they were ranked low. (Briller & Iskakova, 2004)

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Most recently it should be pointed out that Kazakhstan has announced at least one new university in their national capital which profess to be importing and formally partnering with American and European universities (Eurasianet, 2010). They profess this need in order not to continue to send their est and brightest students abroad for higher education. They also express a renewed interest in international rankings, and discuss possibilities of differentiating among those still operating within the national system (IREG, 2009). Arguably the most significant higher education reform in Central Asia that went against vested higher education interests actually did happen in Kyrgyzstan, but focused upon admissions policy rather than institutional efficacy or quality; and it was strenuously resisted by university officials when “budget” students were a mainstay of university enrollments. Since the universities themselves administered their own entrance examinations—following the Soviet examination model based upon memorization of texts and retelling of facts and figures as determined behind closed doors by university officials—this opened up the possibility of corruption. Rectors were charged with “selling” budget spaces to the highest bidders. This particularly affected graduates from rural schools, since their preparation was increasingly inadequate and they did not have money to “buy” scholarships. Camilla Sharshekeeva, education minister appointed in 2000, initiated an entrance exam reform as a result of ideas and innovations she learned about while founding a new, based on the American model, university (AUCA). She particularly appreciated the US style university entrance exam system run externally to universities, and wanted to break the national stranglehold on scholarships under control of university rectors. She was successful in facilitating a contract between the Kyrgyz government and the US Agency for International Development which eventually created and administered a National Scholarship Test (NST). The aim of the original NST was to identify capable students who wanted to attend university based upon their aptitude rather than upon facts and figures memorized from the secondary school. NST scores were then used by the education ministry to distribute scholarships (budget places). Results were weighted by region, and language—Kyrgyz, Russian, and Uzbek. In the test’s first year (2002), 13,807 high school graduates participated, and 5,085 scholarships were awarded (Drummond & DeYoung, 2004). Rectors were steadfast in opposition to the test, since it basically undermined their control of the enrollment process. Besides, they insisted that they had better test mechanisms than the foreigners could possibly offer. Sharshekeeva was soon sacked as education minister, having been widely criticized with having a too-cozy relationship with the US Embassy (DeYoung, 2005). Today, the practical importance of the NST to identify scholarship recipients is less significant, since many of the newer and trendier

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specializations desired by students are not even those the government subsidizes (like teaching). Many students would only accept a budget place in the university to get their foot in the door, to be a student and to be considered a student. And anyway, with more than 200,000 students in universities today, budget students comprise only a small fraction.

JOINING THE BOLOGNA PROCESS Much talk within Kyrgyz Universities in the 1990s was directed toward borrowing best practices and collaborating with European and American universities. Since Kyrgyzstan was envisioned then as the one Central Asian republic most likely to democratize and transition to a market economy, short term inter-institutional exchanges and collaborative networks between Kyrgyzstan and the West were well-funded by external dollars. BNU, like others, partnered during this period with an American university, although the vestiges of this partnership are not apparent today. An even more systematic and potentially far-reaching effort to affect university curricular and organizational reforms recognizable to the West is now underway here. To create common higher educational criteria and objectives that would allow for between-county standards, the European Union initiated in 1999 the Bologna Process. The Kyrgyz education ministry and major national universities (including BNU) signed an agreement to work toward Bologna objectives (Bologna Process, 2009). But, fruits of this agreement are difficult to locate on the ground, even as conferences and meetings on how to implement it remain routine. The official Bologna website does not list Kyrgyzstan (in 2010) as a participating member of Bologna (Benelux, 2009). Meanwhile, the EU’s Tempus program, connected to Bologna, is at least a bit more visible in the country. The mission of Tempus is to “modernize” higher education in partner countries and to create an “area of cooperation” in and around Europe, in Kyrgyzstan focuses, in particular, upon collaboration and curriculum improvement (Tempus, 2005; Tempus Kyrgyzstan, 2009). When the Kyrgyz education ministry agreed to work with Tempus, it underscored that it intended to “preserve all positive experience in education that has been acquired during the Soviet period,” while simultaneously striving for “innovations at all levels” (Tempus, 2005). And the discussion around “preserving the positive” while appearing “innovative” continues. How to accommodate what ends up being very different curricular and organizational philosophies of the various EU missions and programs in Kyrgyzstan is proving to be very difficult (Merrill, 2006). Moving toward and observing Bologna objectives might be possible in some areas, but resisted and ignored in others. For instance, Bologna calls

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for establishing a credit hour system rather than equating instruction with hours of seat work. Such a reform would have to recalculate how teachers are paid, and to create more resources for students outside of the classroom. Ten years after the rector signed the Bologna accord, Bishkek New University claims it uses a credit hour system, but, as this study found, it enables students to have more “free” time rather than more opportunities to study. Another Bologna reform calls for movement toward a three level degree structure—bachelors, masters, and doctoral—which differs from the former Soviet five-year Specialization and Candidate of Science scheme. Yet a credit-hour system and the bachelor/master degree structure have been only partially embraced at some universities. At BNU, administrators urge those who earn a four-year BA (not a three-year BA as Bologna suggests) to enroll for another year (5th) to get a “real” diploma. Other significant Bologna reforms that seem hard to achieve involve emphases upon quantitative measures of academic quality, systematic data collection related to outcomes of instruction, student-centered learning, adequate funding to attract and retain senior academicians, a focus on employability of graduates, easy student mobility between programs, transparency in budgeting and remuneration, etc. It also calls for significant portions of a university’s mission to be dedicated to research and innovation (EUET, 2009). At BNU, there is little transparency on how budget decisions are made, faculty are paid very poorly, research is not part of most instructors professional lives, student performance is as much about personal relationships as it is about quality of learning, and there is little direct involvement or interest in how students enter the workforce after degree completion. Implementing Bologna standards would require new management and accountability structures from the ones which are currently dominated by university officials. Some politicians have rather called for reducing government subsidies of the universities and others have called for re-invigorating vocational preparation programs, but few have had the temerity to demand a complete restructure of the higher education system (Dukenbaev, 2004; Merrill, 2006). Instead, the biggest recent higher education “reform” supported by university rectors is a student loan program that would allow even more students to enter the universities. They would like the government to subsidize such loans to parents so they can enroll more students; an international “reform” strategy they have seen in the United States. To the north, the Russian Federation (also a signatory to Bologna) has recently bitten the restructuring bullet, deciding that its national prestige has been compromised by the helter-skelter of private universities and privatized state universities all seeking tuition dollars. There, a new threetier state university system has been created, with the most prestigious “Na-

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tional Universities” in St. Petersburg and Moscow; fourteen more technically oriented “research universities” redefined throughout the country; and a third tier of comprehensive regional or “federal” universities. The country has moved more substantially to instituting Bologna guidelines and is working towards university ranking protocols (Johnson, 2010).

SHOPPING FOR MORE PROVEN INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES It is hard to imagine a state university in Kyrgyzstan providing internationally validated academic and professional skills for the bulk of their students. Regardless of their claims, places like BNU are not institutions driven by these agendas. At the end of the day, most students will in fact obtain a diploma— earned, negotiated, or bought. Despite university claims that they seek the mantle of Western academic respectability, they concentrate on attracting tuition-paying students from rural parts of Kyrgyzstan and even from India and Pakistan where higher educational opportunities are greatly restricted. Few European or American students will be coming to non-accredited programs here, so the “market” for higher education will increasingly be from the developing world rather than from more advanced countries. There are probable pockets of excellence in local universities. These would be staffed by a few committed instructors—better educated and more experienced— who want to do the best they can for their students. But there is little systemic institutional support for this. At best, they would be attempting to enforce and reinforce quality standards on their own. Finding quality programs thus remains a problem for that modest percentage of university students—from the North or South, from the city or village—who, like Nazgul, Galina, or Svetlana heard earlier, indeed do want to study. They and many others sought or seek what they cannot find at places like BNU—either sound academic programs or professional training linking to a real job. For those that can afford it, though, there are better quality and more instrumental inter-governmental and private universities in the country, providing better opportunities, according to the student survey (Chapter 2). The clear “winners” in the survey sample were the American University of Central Asia (AUCA) students—ostensibly for those interested in English—seeking international linkages, and Kyrgyz Russian Slavonic University (KRSU), for those interested in staying connected with Russian culture and professional opportunities. Falling just behind AUCA and KRSU in terms of perceived prestige were the two Turkish universities operating in Bishkek: International Atturk-Alatoo University and Turkish-Manas Univer-

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sity. None of the state universities ranked in the top four overall, which is revealing since most of the students in the sample were from these schools. The inconvenient fact is that inter-governmental and private universities in Kyrgyzstan that teach subjects related to international careers and possibilities are understood as the better than state institutions that offer the same specializations. Their prestige appears to be based upon reputations about strength of foreign language teaching, and perceptions that their programs actually meet internationally accredited standards. Students revealed that they were impressed with the various merit-based scholarships the intergovernmental and private universities provided, as well as with internships and exchange opportunities. Faculty quality was also perceived to be higher in these institutions, corruption seemed lower, and classroom facilities superior—which was accurate since foreign governments or private sources subsidize faculty salaries and university facilities. KRSU has gone the route of leasing older buildings in the country to keep up with student demand, but the newer Turkish universities in Bishkek and even the revamped AUCA seemingly impressed students who accorded both of them high marks in our survey. Better financial backing provided by foreign governments is obvious in these institutions, as opposed to the state universities which have created divisions to generate extra income. The two Turkish universities in particular appear comparatively attractive and well-maintained inside and out; but just as impressive are the student services provided at Manas, IAAU, and AUCA. All four of the highly ranked universities have more highly paid and international faculty (usually from the home country of the sponsors) on their teaching staffs. They all have language labs with working equipment, large libraries where students can sit and read, extensive computer facilities with easy internet access, student cafeterias serving sit-down lunches, career placement offices and officers, etc. These are both quantitative and qualitative differences between state universities and inter-governmental and private universities.

UNIVERSITY MARKETING ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB Part of the reasons given by students for favoring inter-governmental and private universities is their perceptions that these generally have better facilities and technologies—which is true. Yet the relative largess of resources at the foreign-sponsored universities is not provided solely because of feelings of compassion for under-educated Kyrgyz youth. Unlike BNU, where I heard arguments that “university” should be a safe haven for students from the storms of transition, inter-governmental and private universities seem not to follow this logic: they all have strict and transparent admissions and academic protocols. However, KRSU, AUCA, Manas, and IAAU operate in

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Kyrgyzstan with underlying political and cultural agendas that accompany their missions and pedagogies. “Soft power” or cultural attractiveness rather than (or instead of) economic and military coercion can be effective in shaping positive foreign policy sentiments and orientations (Nye, 2004); and it is very obvious from these university agendas that Russia, Turkey and the United States use them to “attract rather than coerce” the Kyrgyz government and people. The “soft power” of foreign-sponsored universities is easily visible on the websites of all four when they market themselves to parents and students. In their mission statements and descriptions of their programs, they guarantee high quality teaching and learning and promise career opportunities and support for successful students and graduates to continue their education or work in the sponsoring country. Consistent with earlier analysis, only a few of the state universities in Kyrgyzstan have well-developed websites, probably because they target potential students who do not have access to the internet on a regular basis, and therefore have to rely upon face-to-face and word-of-mouth efforts. It may also be because they have difficulty retaining low-paid IT personnel. The consequence is that if one looks for state university websites, you may not find them all the time—they appear and disappear. When found, they are not user-friendly and may not provide the information a prospective applicant might need. Sometimes a state university has links that do not open or instead of programmatic information has a picture only of the rector and some aspect of his biography. The best and sometimes only useful places to find out published information about a state universities is to go to third-party site often funded by an international donor participating in a larger higher education reform project. The Tempus website, for instance, links to some basic descriptions of many universities (http://www.tempus.kg/state-universities.php), but even here links to many universities do not open; they are still sites under construction or re-construction, twenty years after independence and educational reform and a decade after Bologna. Kyrgyz Russian Slavonic University (KRSU), which is inter-governmental, does have a usable website where its pedagogical and political agendas are presented (http://www.krsu.edu.kg/Eng/about.html). KRSU defines its mission as “job training of youth of Kyrgyzstan and Russia in humanities, science, economics and law as well as satisfaction of language and cultural needs of (the) Russian-speaking population in Kyrgyzstan.” It also underscores the importance of “close bilateral collaboration of both states,” and “participation of outstanding scientists and teachers of Russia in educational activity of the country,” in an effort to “render their assistance to the development of scientific and technical potential of Kyrgyzstan, creative contacts and mutual enrichment of both Kyrgyz and Russian cultures.”

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KRSU promises to provide graduates with two diplomas: Kyrgyz and Russian. Thus the Russian Federation intentionally and proudly uses universities (and schools) to continue exercising “soft power,” in addition to their various military and trade connections. Turkish Manas University and International Attaturk-Alatoo University serve as avenues to connect and strengthen ties between Turkey and Kyrgyzstan (Aypay, 2004; Marat & Kydyrmasev, 2007). Both universities teach primarily in English (the world language) and in Turkish. As in Kyrgyz universities, foreign languages are a curricular cornerstone of almost every program, but Russian is not a language of instruction, since part of the implicit missions of Manas and IAAU is to counter any remaining Russian regional hegemony among their long-lost Turkic cousins. Unlike the state universities (and even KRSU), which do not claim to connect students to particular jobs, both Manas and IAAU provide students with professional internship with Turkish businesses in Turkey, Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan, and even Russia. The Turkish-Manas website proudly states that its curricula and organizational model is dedicated to enhancing the Turkish Diaspora and helping to return their long-lost Turkic cousins to the fold. It also pays considerable attention to defining the student as an interactive member of the learning community, rather than a child who needs a highly structured institutional environment—as state universities do—and promises its graduates both Kyrgyz and Turkish diplomas: The mission of the university is to secure an education, in community for the Kyrgyz and Turkish young people as well as for the young in other Turkic Republics and communities, along with helping them develop [a] common approach and cooperation. It is believed that in this way the university will contribute to contemporary scientific developments and will support the renaissance of Turkic civilization. In this frame the goals of the university are: To serve as a model for the higher education system of Kyrgyzstan, and in this way to play a leading role in global integration…[also] to bring up new generations as constructive, creative, modern, and [who are] self-confident, equipped with a multidimensional and critical approach, easily adaptable to the society in constant change…and always ready to learn.(http://www.manas.kg/alt.php?id=1).

IAAU portrays itself as another Turkish option, oriented to moral values and democracy and focused upon Turkic renaissance in Central Asia. Encompassed by the international Gulen Movement, IAAU has a liberal Islamic orientation which adherents perceive is necessary to counteract what they believe was moral vacuum created by the former USSR, and which they believe is the shortcoming of the current secular Turkish state. Since the Kyrgyz government forbids the teaching of religion in any university, IAAU’s approach is to couch morality in terms of general humanities and to deliver it not only through formal academic instruction in classes but

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also through individual mentoring of students in the residential dormitories operated by the university, where many if not most students live (Agai, 2002; Sagbansua & Keles, 2007). IAAU also directly involves parents in academic learning and moral upbringing by staying in constant touch with them (http://www.iaau.edu.kg/index.php?lang=en). The AmericanUniversity of Central Asia was the first choice university in my survey, possibly somewhat biased by the fact that the students in my sample were interested in and were studying English or other subjects in English. Unlike both Turkish universities, which target many able but less affluent students, AUCA states that its mission is to prepare students having already demonstrated superior academic achievement for leadership positions in the private and public sectors throughout Central Asia. As in Manas, IAAU, and to some extent KRSU, AUCA’s faculty and student body are more international than in state universities; teachers are better paid, student services and resources are better, and the university has a career center and finds international academic scholarships for its best graduates. And many students know that (as we heard earlier from Nazgul). AUCA brings traditions and standards of American universities to Kyrgyzstan (Reeves, 2004, 2005). It uses a credit system (differently from state universities) and has an American liberal arts format, although it cannot yet award students an officially recognized US degree in several majors. It claims to use a critical thinking approach as promulgated by the Open Society Institute (OSI, 2003), and to involve undergraduate students in problem-solving and policy-oriented research related to social practice in Kyrgyzstan. This means that students are defined differently by this university: [We are] an international, multi-disciplinary learning community in the American liberal arts tradition that develops enlightened and impassioned leaders for the democratic transformation of Central Asia…[we are] honest, self-critical, and respectful, [cherishing] critical inquiry and investigative learning both for their own sake, and for the development of an open, diverse and just society that suits the region in which we learn and serve. We will become the best teaching and research university in Central Asia, distinctive for our emphasis on critical thinking and on faculty and student research. We will make the results of our cutting-edge research available for the use and benefit of the citizens of Central Asia.(http://www.auca.kg/en/about_auca/ NMission)

One more private university should be mentioned here, since it will represent yet another pedagogical/moral/philosophical stance: the University of Central Asia (UCA). This institution will span three Central Asian republics (Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan) and will have three remote campuses intentionally outside of the national capitals of all three countries. UCA is being developed by the Aga Khan Foundation; the Aga Khan

CONCLUDING REMARKS AND INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES • 159

being the spiritual (and financial) leader of the Ismaili Muslim faith (see http://www.theismaili.org/). UCA does not proclaim that it will be the largest or most internationally known of Central Asian universities. To the contrary, it suggests that the real task of higher education is to borrow from the global and dedicate this knowledge to the local. UCA’s mission is announced as follows: To offer an internationally recognized standard of higher education in Central Asia…which will contribute leadership, ideas and innovations to the transitioning economies and communities of the region…specifically [to] mountain communities, their traditions, cultures, and economic development needs…[we]encourage the exchange of information and ideas across borders; the mobility of the best and brightest minds throughout the region; and the study of local economic and cultural issues, while being committed to the development of the region as a whole. UCA will establish a rigorous research programme in all of its schools and activities to conduct the full range of original research needed to close the knowledge gap in the region and bring new data to solve chronic problems. (http://www.ucentralasia.org/#vision).

Ironically, this university, which is trying to build its own campus for undergraduate programs “from scratch,” is still under construction. It aims to create internationally informed programs before it even has any students.

CONCLUSION: REDEFINING STUDENTS AND UNIVERSITIES IN KYRGYZSTAN What it means to be a student today in the Kyrgyz Republic is redefined from Soviet times, and so has what it means to be a university. But, these redefinitions have not taken place as some might have hoped. Former President Akayeav’s announced interest in enabling Kyrgyzstan to enter the global market economy partly upon the strength of its inherited education system and well educated students has not happened, even as the numbers of higher education institutions and student enrollments have surged. Instead, state universities have proliferated to accommodate high student demand to enter into fields that sound like they might be useful for the long-awaited transition to the market, but for which there is very little actual need. Since there is little market for these market-oriented skills, few students or parents have learned to actually demand universities to teach these skills, and the government relies little on private sector expertise or international advisors on how to reorganize the universities to be more market-focused, since there is no market. So, students who in the previous era would not have gone on to higher education now arrive in the state universities content to receive an education that their parents remember as important, but which no longer exists either. The senior learned faculty who

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were once the backbone of higher education here are mostly now gone, leaving newer and younger staff to teach many subjects about which they have little knowledge. Students eventually come to learn that what they are studying for is of little actual utility in the market, and thus seek out local employment opportunities little related to their degrees. So, students are redefined as those fortunate enough to have parents that can send them to a university to enjoy the life of a student and access to a growing youth culture in the city, where they can avoid the difficulties (for a while) of having to grow up too fast. Universities are redefined as expensive places for students to be students. To do this, most universities cut many corners both in terms of quality and learner expectations. What is mandated really isn’t; what is taught may be irrelevant; what is expected can be negotiated. But, young people now defined as students can still acquire a highly desired diploma which used to signify proficiency in a socially valued skill, but no longer is. Meanwhile, to find a program—especially an internationally-based program—that operates more in accord with what it purports to teach and has some real connection to professional markets, one has to attend a university that has real international connections. But, this is no panacea for the country if it wants to enter the market, since these are mostly private, can be quite expensive and have entrance requirements that many students cannot pass given the great decline in national secondary education quality. Thus, many of the paradoxes involving higher education for me have been revealed; the latent here trumps the manifest. But for many reasons, these revelations remain unsatisfying. I am stuck on one of the answers given in my survey from 2008, who when asked why he was in the university responded: “without the university, there is nowhere else to go.”

CHAPTER 8

APPENDIX

KYRGYZSTAN STUDENT SURVEY 2008 QUESTIONS (ENGLISH VERSION) 1.

Did you enter the university immediately after secondary school? (check one)  Yes  No

2.

Did you graduate from school in: (check one)  Bishkek  oblast city  small city/raion center  village

3.

Are you originally from the north or the south of Kyrgyzstan? (check one)  north  south

Lost in Transition: Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic pages 161–165 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing 161 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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4.

What was your language of instruction at school? (check one)  Kyrgyz  Russian  other ___________________

5.

What is your nationality? (check one)  Kyrgyz  Russian  Uzbek  other (name)__________________

6.

What is your gender? (check one)  male  female

7.

Who is paying for your education? (check one)  myself  my parents  my relatives  my parents and relatives together  loan from a bank  I am a budget student

8.

What are your parents’ occupations?  Mother__________________  Father __________________

9.

Does your father have (check one)  higher education  secondary special  secondary

10.

Does your mother have (check one)  higher education  secondary special  secondary

11.

Do you live with (check one)  my parents  my relatives  with a roommate(dormitory)  with a roommate (renting apartment)  by myself

12.

Was your secondary school education strong enough to enter the university?  Yes

APPENDIX • 163

 No 13.

Was your preparation in Russian at school strong enough for you to study here?  Yes  No

14.

Was your preparation in English at school strong enough to study here?  Yes  No

15.

Do you take extra instruction after regular classes in order to be successful at the university?  Yes  No

16.

Who decided that you would come to this university to study? (check one)  myself  my parents  myself and my parents together

17.

If you are a boy, did you come to the university partly to avoid military conscription?  Yes  No

18.

If you are a girl, did you come to the university partly to avoid being kidnapped?  Yes  No

19.

Please explain why you choose this university and specialization exactly in one or two sentences.

20.

20. What is the most important reason to go to the university? (rank: 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th choice)  ________ to get good knowledge;  ________ to help me find a good job later;  ________ to make my parents proud of me;  ________ to be able to visit with my friends  ________ to be able to live in Bishkek

21.

Are you satisfied with the condition of the buildings and classrooms of your university?  Yes  No

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22.

Are you satisfied with the equipment and internet recourses of the university?  Yes  No

23.

If you had enough money to pay for your education and knew you could have been admitted to any university in Kyrgyzstan, which universities and why would you have chosen?  My 1st choice ______________ because ______________  My 2nd choice ______________ because ______________  My 3rd choice ______________ because ______________

24.

What do you need higher education for?

25.

What specific skills are you learning at the university to help you in your career?

26.

Do you know about anyone in your group paying a bribe for a good mark?  Yes  No

27.

How difficult is it for you to study at the university? (check one)  very easy  not so hard  difficult  very difficult

28.

How many minutes do you travel every day to come to the university? ________

29.

29. About how many hours per week do you study at home after classes? (choose one)  0–3  3–5  5–10  more than 10

30.

About how many hours per week do you spend with your friends outside of classes?  0–3  3–5  5–10  more than 10

31.

How well do you and your group mates get along together? (check one)  we are all good friends and get along

APPENDIX • 165

 we often quarrel among ourselves. 32.

Do you plan to find a job in the specialization you are studying in?  Yes  No

33.

How will you find a job when you finish the university? (choose one)  The university will help me  My relatives will help me  I will find a job by myself  I have not thought about this yet

34.

Do you plan to go overseas to continue your education or work when you graduate?  Yes  No

35.

Would you teach in secondary school if offered a job?  Yes  No

36.

Would you teach in the university if offered a job?  Yes  No

37.

Would you work outside of Bishkek if you found a job?  Yes  No

38.

Please write any other comments you can make to help understand your university expectations.

Thank you!

Celebrating Turkish Culture, Kyrgyz Turkish Manas University

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