HIGHER EDUCATION IN POST-SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA SEARCH FOR NEW IDENTITIES

GOLAN MOSTAFA

ABSTRACT

Five Central Asian nations emerged as independent states as a result of the
collapse of the USSR in 1991. As post-Soviet states, they are faced with numerous
difficulties and complicated issues and challenges in their state and nationbuilding
process. As any independent state, the new Central Asian states aspire
to reform the old education system and build and develop a new ones reflecting
their respective national, political and ideological goals and objectives. But the
process has been extremely difficult and complicated because of the absence of
a tradition of higher education during the pre-Soviet era (except Uzbekistan)
and the legacy of a heavy-handed ideological, communist, “Russified” and
“Sovietised” education system. Soviet Union built huge numbers of higher
educational institutions and modernized and universalized the education system
but the objective was to promote, expand and sustain communist ideology and
Soviet rule in the region. Central Asian nations are now facing with numerous
problems and difficulties in modernizing the old education system and creating
new ones. Each country is trying to resolve this problem by taking various steps
and measures and searching for new outlooks and identities.