Το Καζακστάν στοχεύει στην προσέλκυση 150.000 διεθνών φοιτητών έως το 2029. Τι ωθεί την προσπάθεια;
Το Καζακστάν στοχεύει να καλύψει την αυξανόμενη ζήτηση της περιοχής για τριτοβάθμια εκπαίδευση επεκτείνοντας συνεργασίες με διεθνή πανεπιστήμια και δημιουργώντας νέα ερευνητικά κέντρα.
01:30Of the current foreign students, nearly 40% come from India, mostly in recognized medical programs.
01:36For the first time, Asian students outnumber those from the post-Soviet space.
01:40And in a striking reversal, more Russians are now studying in Kazakhstan than the other way around.
01:46To understand what's driving the shift, we spoke to the person leading the country's education transformation,
01:52Minister of Science and Higher Education, Sayasat Nurbek.
01:55So we had very clear vision, one, bringing good big partnerships, and then try to attract as many foreign students as possible.
02:07Second, research is becoming huge on our agenda.
02:11A lot of these great universities now have access to critical minerals, for example.
02:16And so we are launching several joint research centers in critical minerals enrichment and mining and metallurgy.
02:23How are international and domestic students supported in their entrepreneurship and deep tech development?
02:29Every single university student in Kazakhstan will have to go for AI courses, get certificates.
02:36Out of 650,000 students, over 4,000 students already have certificates.
02:42Then we're launching a $100 million seed fund just to fund AI startups of these college students and faculty members.
02:48And then we're going to go through AI entrepreneurship modules.
02:53And so every single student will have a possibility to become what we now call Unicorns, a one-person, billion-dollar company, a founder,
03:03with full support at every level, incubation, acceleration, and basic learning.
03:09What results are you seeing in aligning graduates with the global labor market?
03:14We'll have to wait for the first batch of graduates, and we're so far so good.
03:20We have Nazarbayev University, we have De Montfort University, and their graduates are really good quality.
03:26I mean, I would say they would comply with any international demand.
03:30About 70% of these students, they go and hire by international companies, global companies, big four companies.
03:38Some of them pursue their academic careers in top universities, best Ivy League, best Russell Group,
03:44best research-intensive universities in the world for their master's programs, PhD programs.
03:49They stand up to any international standard given by large companies, Fortune 500 companies.
03:56Well, Mr. Minister, it was such a pleasure having you on our program today.
04:00Thank you for carving out the time out of your busy schedule for us.
04:03Thank you. Thank you for having me.
04:07Private companies are also stepping up with global partnerships.
04:10One local company is opening the doors to a new British university.
04:17A British liberal arts university will open in Astana next September, bringing Western education closer to home.
04:23Offering degrees in business, AI, and education, it plans to grow from 100 to 400 students by 2029.
04:29My plan is for it to set the new standards, especially in a commercially competitive field where other big players will have to accept these roles
04:42and will have to improve their quality and will have to really care about their students and what kind of people their students will become.
04:50Gabit Bekahmetov says Kazakhstan's regional position and cultural diversity make it uniquely attractive for students seeking a cross-border education.
04:57In combination with the Soviet fundamental science, with the Chinese advances in innovations, with the Western standards and expectations and ambitions.
05:12And all this, and some kind of Oriental kindness and hospitality included in that, and combined with our nomadic dynamism, I think this is going to be a success recipe.
05:29With more Western campuses opening, Gabit Bekahmetov believes Kazakhstan is on course to become a globally competitive education model.
05:35Four of Kazakhstan's top research universities have launched supercomputers with a combined capacity of 32 petaflops.
05:45That's 32 quadrillion calculations per second, powerful enough to train AI models, process vast databases, and run advanced scientific simulations.
05:54The country's flagship English language university is leading the way.
05:58Joining us in the studio is Nazarbayev University President, Waqar Ahmad.
06:01Mr. Waqar, welcome and great to have you on.
06:06Thank you for the invitation. I'm delighted to be here.
06:08Can you tell us more about the types of fundamental and applied research your university plans to conduct with the supercomputer capabilities?
06:15Prime example is the development of Kaza-LM.
06:17And as we develop further, we would need even greater computing power in order to do that.
06:24If you think that the basic model which was developed with the Kaza-LM is largely text-based.
06:28So Kaza-LM was a basic model. We're now building on it.
06:34So there are new systems which focus on voice recognition.
06:37There are new tools which are using image processing and so on.
06:43And some of the new models which will be developed in this area are going to be all singing, all dancing models,
06:49which use text, which use sound, which use image, and so on.
06:53Can you tell me how joint funds help reinforce Kazakhstan's standing as a regional academic and innovations hub?
07:00We are developing new kinds of partnerships.
07:02But we're also looking at how we can use the money that we invest in research jointly.
07:07So let's say that if we are investing a million dollars in research in a particular area,
07:13if we were to go into partnership with two other universities,
07:15and if they were to match our funding, we now have three million dollars that we can bid for and they can bid for.
07:22But it also has the inbuilt advantage of collaborative research, which would be of higher quality.
07:28It would get published in more prestigious journals.
07:32More people will use it.
07:34It would enhance the reputation of the university and the reputation of the country.
07:39And it would also address fundamental questions, which face whether they face the economy,
07:45whether they relate to climate change, whether they relate to international relations, and so on.
07:49Thanks so much for being with us today.
07:51It's a pleasure. Thank you.
07:54Bye for now and join us in the next episode of East West Connect.
