Last month, the Ministry of Education of Turkmenistan suspended the money transfers through state banks to pay for part-time education abroad. It has further limited the access to education, the level of which has constantly been declining during the last decade, now outside the country.

The education reforms in the country have been fluctuating owing to the personal whims of the President. He has changed his position drastically two times. An ‘English-for-all’ policy was pursued during the first half of 1990s, which marginalized the knowledge of Russian among the population. A few years later, all English courses were cancelled throughout the country, wit the exception of a few small schools. The President began pushing for nine-year school education, which has finally been put into practice during the last two years. Considering the three-months mandatory cotton picking periods in the fall of every year, the number of which amounts to two academic years by the end of schooling, the general education of ninety-nine percent of the all the state schools is de facto seven years. In 1999 about 100,000 high school graduates were offered a little over 3150 places in the institutes and universities by the President himself. In Kyrgyzstan there are 120,000 students at the moment, whereas in Turkmenistan this number does not exceed 20,000. Consequently, due to the declining number of university places, the amount of students going to study abroad full-time or part-time has significantly increased. The different currency exchange rates in the state banks and black markets allowed citizens to fund their education abroad, due to the subsidized official rate transfers. In other words, one could sell a dollar in the black market, take the local money to the bank, exchange it to four dollars through the transfer, and send it abroad to pay the tuition.  

The result of canceling the bank transfers to pay for a part-time education will reduce the level of education in the country radically. The implicit aim of the nine year school policy was to make to it impossible for the students to study abroad at any type of higher education establishment, as the widely accepted requirement abroad is 10 to 11 years. Even the American University in Kyrgyzstan is about to play into the hands of the Turkmen President’s policy by its reluctance to allow Turkmenistani high school students to take part in the upcoming entrance exams in July 2001. Added to this school policy, the new financial cutback will mainly affect middle-income families throughout the country, since only they are forced to search for different means of educating their children outside the country. Inside the country, the notoriously corrupted educational system is solely open to the top few percent of the population. At the same time, the educational level of these institutions is far from acceptable. Logically, it would seem that the best choice for all who can afford it is to study abroad. But this possibility has been greatly discouraged by another decree of the President, which requires such students to translate their Master’s and Ph. D. theses into Turkmen and present it in front of the President’s Commission for approval and state recognition, if the latter finds it suitable for the country’s general prosperity. 

The recent cutback, and talks of action constraining the possibilities of full-time foreign education, falls into the line of unsuccessful state educational policies in Turkmenistan, since the President has taken the matter fully in his own hands. Personal decision-making in this area constantly led to the continuous reshuffling of all educational establishments’ staff. No one dares to challenge any policies of the life-long President of Turkmenistan. Yet everyone wonders how the country is going to develop without educational resources. 

By Bakyt Meredov