Transnational Higher Education—The Case of Kazakhstan

Abstract

In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, higher education in Central Asia started to rapidly internationalize. The work of transnational higher education institutions (THEIs), including branch campuses and schools sponsored by international organizations, allows the Central Asian states to de-monopolize and diversify sources of knowledge and technologies. Human rights education is one of the new fields of research and teaching introduced through the curricula of THEIs in Central Asia. Using the case of Kazakhstan, we analyze the proliferation of courses related to human rights in THEIs. Our findings show that despite the presence of such courses in some THEIs, stakeholders such as the state and the universities themselves demonstrate little if any interest in human rights education. As a result, human rights are only taught at THEIs in Kazakhstan to a limited extent. We suggest further ways to explore this phenomenon in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states.