Government to leave only 100 universities in 2 years

Kazakhstan Student

Kazakhstan will have around 100 universities remaining in the nearest two years, Tengrinews.kz reports citing Kazakhstan Minister of Education and Science Bakytzhan Zhumagulov.

“The experience shows that the majority of the commercial universities are unable to do provide education of the required quality. That’s why we plan to slash their number from 66 to 30 in the nearest three years.

 We do not preclude optimization of the public universities either, especially in the view of the President’s instruction to focus on meeting the needs of the country’s regions.

In the end, the total number of the universities (commercial and public) will make 100 in two years,” Zhumagulov said at the government meeting.

He noted that all students of the merged universities should be able to continue their studies. According to Zhumagulov, “this is a strict requirement”.

According to the Minister, the number of universities has already been slashed from 149 to 136 in the course of their consolidation.

“This will allow us to reach the universities/population ratio accepted in developed countries. In the end most of Kazakhstan regions will have one state and one major private university each,” the Minister added.