Sergey Yun, Anastasia Pogorelskaya, Olim Turdikulov. Academic mobility and educational migration under international crisis: adaptation of Central Asian countries through geographic diversification

For all countries of Central Asia, Russia has traditionally been the main direction of international educational cooperation and educational migration. The authorities of three out of five Central Asian countries - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan - under the current international crisis, decided, without abandoning the Russian vector, to speed up the development of other geographical directions through “educational diplomacy”. Citizens of all Central Asian countries, in their turn, decide on the place of receiving higher education under the influence of a negative information campaign against Russia. Two years of crisis is a period that allows us to determine at least short-term trends in educational migration among Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and the outside world.

Statistics available for analyzing international educational cooperation between Central Asian countries have varying degrees of detail and efficiency. The most complete statistics on international connections of universities (including data on academic mobility, joint programs, foreign students) are published by Kazakhstani authorities represented by Higher Education Development National Center under the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The authorities of Uzbekistan have recently launched a statistical service containing various current data and allowing the one to analyze, among other things, work of foreign branches and joint educational programs of the country’s universities. Higher education statistics published by the Kyrgyz authorities only include data on the number of foreign students studying at universities of the country...