Demography and Education — Valdai Club

The importance of Central Asia for Russia, the long-term nature of investments in educational cooperation, and the accumulated experience require clearer strategic and project foundations for Russian-Central Asian educational interaction, Sergey Yun writes.

Forecasting is a notoriously thankless task. In her 2014 article “The Water Problem of Central Asia: the Roles of Russia, China, and Iran”, Valdai Club expert Anastasia Likhacheva, Dean of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at the Higher School of Economics, cites the World Bank in providing the population growth data for the Central Asian countries with a forecast for 2050 (let’s assume that the forecast itself dates back to 2013, when the article was submitted for publication). If we compare them with the latest actual data from the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the UN Secretariat, it turns out that as of July 1, 2023, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have already exceeded the forecast for 2050, and other countries in the region are very close to it (Table 1).

The latest (July 2024) UN forecast for population growth in Central Asia (medium, moderate scenario) is continuation of high growth rates with some gradual decrease in the annual indicator (for example, for Kazakhstan this indicator is expected to decrease from 1.18% in 2025 to 0.81% in 2050). On average, the region’s population will have increased 40.3% between 2023 and 2050, with the growth leaders being Tajikistan (50%) and Uzbekistan (46.2%) (Table 1).

Table 1. Population dynamics in Central Asia, million people

Source: Likhacheva A.B. The water problem of Central Asia: the roles of Russia, China and Iran // Asia and Africa today. 2014. No. 3. P. 57; UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Population Division. World Population Prospects 2024.

Obviously, such population growth demography presents a very serious challenge for the social sphere of the Central Asian countries, as well as the education systems. All levels of education require additional funding at least to ensure the accessibility of education (i.e., a sufficient number of seats). The countries of the region have traditionally (and justifiably, given their limited resources) focused on the secondary school education system, but here, too, given the demographics, there is no saturation, new schools need to be built. There is also pre-school, secondary vocational and higher education, which are also important from the point of view of upbringing, socialisation, quality of educational results, the labour market, the knowledge economy, etc. It is no coincidence that the countries of the region are implementing programmes to sharply increase, for example, the availability of preschool education (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) and higher education (Uzbekistan). Demographics will require significant new investments in the construction of new kindergartens, schools, technical schools, and universities.

The task of increasing funding for the education sector exists against the backdrop of an already high share of educational spending in the state budgets of Central Asian countries: according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics for 2020-2023, for the countries of the region this share accounts for 20-29% of the state budget (most often about 20-22%), higher than Moldova (16-17%), the countries of the Caucasus (10-14%), Belarus (12-13%) and Russia (9%) (Table 2).

Table 2. The share of education in the structure of the state budget of post-Soviet countries, %

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Expenditure on education as a percentage of total government expenditure.

But we also need to invest in the quality of education: teaching staff, material and technical equipment, the modernisation of programmes to meet the needs of the real sector of the economy, digitalisation… Various tools are used to assess quality. For example: the decision of the Kyrgyz authorities in 2021 to return to a comparative study of school learning outcomes using the OECD PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) model is worthy of respect, despite the difficult experience of the country’s schoolchildren participating in the PISA studies in 2006 and 2009, when they took the last places. Since 2022, Uzbekistan has been participating in PISA studies. Kazakhstan has been in the programme for a long time and has shown significant progress.

For Russia, the challenges and tasks in terms of education quality are also relevant. For example, the 2021 PISA testing of Russian schoolchildren yielded an average score of just under 500 out of a maximum of 1000 points (reading literacy – 497 points, mathematics – 498, natural science – 476), with a significant proportion of students not exceeding the threshold level (reading literacy – 15%, mathematics – 19%, natural science – 17%). PISA assessment based on the 2021 study. As for the accessibility of education, different demographics dictate different tasks for Russia, in particular, attracting foreign students to the country’s universities and their subsequent employment in the Russian labour market, which suffers from a personnel shortage. On the other hand, for the Central Asian countries, the main suppliers of foreign students and labour migrants to Russia, demand from Russia can significantly mitigate the demographic pressure on national systems.

Thus, attracting external resources for education and developing broad international cooperation are relevant for both Russia and the Central Asian countries. A review of the current situation shows that the Central Asian countries and Russia are implementing a large number of projects, including flagship ones, concerning cooperation on educational issues, including:

1) Two Slavic universities – the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University (KRSU) in Bishkek has about 9,000 students and the Russian-Tajik (Slavic) University in Dushanbe has about 5,500 students; both operate under international agreements and on co-financing terms.

27 operating branches of Russian universities in the countries of the region: 14 in Uzbekistan (about 9,000 students)

2) Statistics of higher education in Uzbekistan, 8 in Kazakhstan (about 4,500), 3 in Tajikistan and 2 in Turkmenistan. There are plans to open new branches of Russian universities. It was also decided to open a branch of the Kazakh National University in Omsk in September 2025, the first branch of a foreign university in Russia. The sources of funding for the branches are varied: investments from the head universities and the Russian federal government, central (budget places) and local authorities (buildings) of the countries in the region, industrial partners (educational equipment), and students’ parents (paid places).

3) Education of citizens of Central Asian countries in Russian universities. According to the report of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, in 2024 39,742 people from the countries of the region studied at universities in Russia at the expense of the Russian budget (Table 3). If the average cost of tuition per year in Russian universities is assumed to be 200,000 rubles, then it turns out that about 8 billion rubles will be spent from the Russian budget on the education of Central Asian citizens in the 2024-2025 academic year (90 million USD at the current exchange rate). There are 92,465 students studying under a contract; with an average cost of 200,000 rubles, the cost to students and their parents is equal to 18.5 billion rubles.

Table 3. Education of citizens of Central Asian countries in universities in Russia in the 2024-2025 academic year

Source: Information about the organization carrying out educational activities under higher education educational programmes – bachelor’s degree programmes, specialist programmes, master’s degree programmes. Information for 2024.

4) Financing of secondary school construction in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan by Russia. In Tajikistan, 5 schools were opened in 2022, and negotiations are underway to build 5 more schools. In Kyrgyzstan, it is planned to begin the construction of 9 schools this year, the construction estimate for each is 450-500 million rubles.

5) Network projects and partnerships with the participation of universities in Russia and Central Asian countries: network universities of the CIS and SCO, Eurasian Network University, Russian-Kyrgyz Consortium of Technical Universities; joint educational programmes and mobility programmes; joint scientific projects, events, etc.

6) The Russian Teacher Abroad project of the Ministry of Education of Russia, the projects Klass (secondary education) and Malysh (preschool education) in Uzbekistan.

7) Numerous youth projects in the fields of education, science, volunteering, etc., supported by non-profit organisations, universities, and the authorities in Russia and the Central Asian countries.

The list above is not exhaustive. But in general, it allows us to conclude that very large investments are made in the field of education by Russia, which are supplemented by investments from the Central Asian countries. According to very rough estimates, funding for Russian-Central Asian educational cooperation from various sources amounts to 50-100 billion rubles per year.

This cooperation is not being implemented without difficulties, among which I will note three aspects. First, there are gaps or deficits in terms of areas of cooperation. Secondary school technical education remains completely undeveloped. There are very few mechanisms for stimulating scientific cooperation, which work sporadically. Despite all the long-term discussions and initiatives, there is no mechanism to support the mobility of students, postgraduates, and teachers. Second, Russia and the Central Asian countries have different academic and management cultures, which make interaction difficult. In particular, in the Central Asian countries there are frequent changes of university leadership, with greater emphasis on short-term actions and effects instead of long-term project work. Cultural differences, it must be noted, can also be a plus for the development of cooperation: for example, in the Central Asian countries there is definitely less bureaucracy and formalism, which can be an insurmountable obstacle in Russia. Third, there are financial deficits. Thus, despite the priority of the issue, Russia has not created any fund for supporting the opening of branches of Russian universities in the Central Asian countries. As a result, in Uzbekistan, where the largest number of branches of Russian universities have been opened, their share among all branches of foreign universities in terms of the number of branches is impressive – almost 50%, but in terms of the number of students, they account for only about 22%.

Huge investments on an annual basis; many areas, formats, projects and involved organisations with overlapping activities; the presence of certain gaps and deficits – all this suggests that the time has come to create a Project Office in Russia for educational cooperation with the countries of Central Asia, which would cover its strategic framework. The work of the Project Office should begin with an audit of the entire network of relations in the field of education: what works effectively and how, is there duplication, is it possible to ensure complementarity and, as a result, reduce costs or redirect resources to other areas. The Project Office, in addition to strategy, could keep its finger on the pulse of the process and promptly respond to problems and failures in mechanisms, which is lacking in Russian policy.

Recently, there has been regular news about the creation of new project offices in Russia in relevant areas, including the VTB – Project Office to prepare proposals for the development of the North – South international transport corridor, the Strategic Agency for Support and Formation of AI Developments (a project office created under the Skolkovo Foundation), and the Project Office of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia for the development of international youth cooperation with the countries of North-East, South-East and South Asia under Far Eastern Federal University…

The importance of Central Asia for Russia, the long-term nature of investments in educational cooperation, and the accumulated experience require clearer strategic and project foundations for Russian-Central Asian educational interaction.

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