Foreword

Kazakhstan’s higher education system is at the forefront of the country’s economic diversification challenge. While progress has been made over the past ten years, significant additional improvements will be required if Kazakhstan is to achieve its aims of developing high-quality, labour market relevant skills throughout the population, and establishing research and innovation as a key driver of economic growth. There are currently few measures of the current skills outcomes of the country’s education and training systems available, and of how well these systems are positioned to meet the needs of the labour market. Furthermore, much of the evidence on skills outcomes that does exist is not encouraging. Four principal features characterise the nation’s higher education system: low level of public funding, inefficient targeting of this funding, the legacy of central planning on the performance of higher education institutions, and information gaps that create obstacles to the implementation of evidence-based policy making and accountability.