• 17 January 2025
• 207

Internationalization of universities in Kazakhstan: A step towards international educational standards

In his Message to the People of Kazakhstan dated September 2, 2024, the Head of State noted: "The government is integrating the field of higher education into the international educational space. 23 well-known foreign universities have already started operating in the country. They need to be given maximum support. In particular, the state order for training specialists should be gradually increased."

Partnership agreements have been concluded with 34 foreign universities. Currently, there are 23 partner universities in the country from Great Britain, Italy, China, Russia, the USA, France and South Korea. 11 more agreements need to be implemented in 2025.

The Foreign Partnership has allocated 2,090 grants for Kazakhstani students to study at universities. Today, thousands of students study in 34 specialties, including such major areas as pedagogical, engineering and artificial intelligence. For these purposes, state educational grants (joint educational programs and dual degree programs) and funds from investors are allocated by creating conditions for them with the support of the state.

The selection for foreign partner universities is based on the personnel needs in individual industries and the demands of the regions.
Cooperation with leading foreign universities is aimed at training specialists in high-demand and scarce specialties, such as the nuclear industry, the development of "green" hydrogen, and ensuring water safety, which has no analogues in Kazakhstan.

Pursuant to the instruction of the Head of State, a branch of the British Heriot Watt University for petroleum engineering, electric power engineering and computer engineering has been opened on the basis of Aktobe Regional University named after K.Zhubanov.

A branch of the D.I.Mendeleev Russian University of Chemical Technology has been opened on the basis of the M.Dulati Taraz Regional University to train personnel in the field of chemistry and chemical technologies.

In order to train teachers, a branch of Gazi University (Turkey) operates on the basis of the South Kazakhstan Pedagogical University.
The branch of the Beijing University of Language and Culture (PRC) operates on the basis of Astana International University.
A branch of Queens University (Ireland) operates on the basis of Narkhoz University.

As part of the strategy for the internationalization of higher education until 2025, a scholarship program has been launched for foreign citizens, including representatives of the Kazakh diaspora who are not citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

In the 2024-2025 academic year, 550 students were accepted at 37 universities in Kazakhstan under the scholarship program for foreign citizens (bachelor's degree - 490, master's degree - 50, doctoral degree - 10). The scholarship program includes free education and a monthly scholarship.
 
Development of educational tourism in Kazakhstan

The Bolashak International Scholarship has been being implemented for 30 years. According to the instructions of the Head of State, the Bolashak International scholarship was aimed at technical, engineering, medical and pedagogical areas.

Over the years, the scholarship has allowed 12,727 citizens of Kazakhstan to study at leading universities in the world, 55% of them in humanities, 36% in engineering, 7% in medicine, and 2% in culture and art.

Graduates have studied and completed internships at more than 400 leading foreign universities in more than 30 countries around the world.

In 2024, graduates of the program performed 213,000 medical operations, trained 145 thousand students, and published more than a thousand scientific papers.

In 2024, the share of foreign students in the university population was 15%, and 245 dual degree programs were implemented with 97 universities from 23 countries.

The number of international students became 31,400 from 93 countries, which is 4,600 more than the 26,800 students from 82 countries in 2023.

More than 1,600 foreign experts are involved in teaching at universities in Kazakhstan.

As a result of the educational programs of 2024, 21 Kazakhstani universities were included in the international ranking of the best universities in the world QS World University Rankings 2024.

"It is necessary to significantly update the content and method of teaching university subjects. Future teachers, doctors, agronomists, lawyers and industry specialists must necessarily have basic knowledge of artificial intelligence," Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said.

In order to implement the instructions of the Head of State, free access to international databases of scientific organizations and universities of the country was provided.

Together with Google, courses on artificial intelligence have been launched for 5,000 students from 15 universities in the country.

Within the framework of the Coursera online educational platform project, 40 thousand licenses were allocated to Kazakhstani students and 153 thousand certificates were issued from 93 universities.

Agreements have been reached on joint education and training of specialists with leading universities in Korea and China.

On behalf of the Head of State, schools of artificial intelligence will operate on the basis of three Kazakhstani universities.:

The School of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science of Seoul National University of Science and Technology has opened at Korkyt ata Kyzylorda University.

A branch of the City University of Hong Kong has been opened at the Kazakh National Research Technical University named after K.I.Satpayev.

An international AI research center and a center for smart transport management technologies have been opened at D.Serikbayev East Kazakhstan Technical University on the basis of the Lu Ban workshop.

Relevant courses from Google, NVIDIA, Huawei, Coursera and other international technology giants have been introduced in national universities.

Memoranda have been signed with Coursera, Google, Nvidia, Huawei Technologies Kazakhstan LLP, 01 Edu System, Binance Kazakhstan.

On the basis of the AstanaHub Technopark, the program has launched full-fledged courses for university teachers in AI areas, covering 700 teachers from 47 universities in Kazakhstan.

The interuniversity AI standard in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has been adopted, 20 educational programs have been developed with 20 universities.

The training of the KazLLM language model based on 148 billion tokens in Kazakh, English, and Russian has been completed.

The model was developed with the participation of the Nazarbayev University team, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, the National Scientific and Practical Center "Til-Kazyna" named after Shaysultan Shayakhmetov, and others.

117 experts were involved in the development, including more than 40 candidates of sciences, PhD and masters of research institutes and universities.

The Ministry presented to the Head of State the pilot AI program AI-Sana, aimed at the comprehensive development of AI skills among students of all levels in priority specialties, covering 100,000 students studying artificial intelligence, programming and startup acceleration.