Creating an Efficient Management System

The Education Development Strategy uses the concept of efficiency to emphasize the principles of productivity of the education system of Kyrgyzstan. In the discourse on quality, the concept of efficiency is used to illustrate the power of the flow of the market economy terminologies and arguments related to the monitoring and evaluations in Kyrgyzstan’s higher education. Lawn and Segerholm (2011, 35) argue that even though there is no ‘objective standard of efficiency’, educational evaluations have led to the search for efficiency of education achievements. In this sub-section I empirically demonstrate this theoretical understanding of objectivity of quality in the field of higher education of Kyrgyzstan.

The concept of efficiency refers to how to achieve maximum productivity with minimum waste of effort or expense. The concept of efficiency is linked to the management of the education system. In the education development strategy, the monitoring and evaluation system is part of the management system. When the strategy describes purposes of the intended education system, the concepts of the market economy appears:

“Inadequate monitoring and evaluation system. Modern management and strategic planning are directly dependent on the integrated monitoring and evaluation system, including an independent one, which is currently absent in the education sector. Given the strategy of providing greater autonomy to schools and other educational institutions, it is important to determine the accountability mechanisms that ensure efficient, effective and transparent operation of autonomous educational institutions.” (EDS 2020, 30)

Within a short time after independence, the education development strategy had been reconstructed and the language of education had been developed with concepts closer to the market economy. The concept of efficiency was used in higher education in Kyrgyzstan in two ways; to describe something that operates systemically and someone with the competencies to work productively. First, in

EDS 2020, the concept of efficiency describes something that works in an organized and systematic way:

“Efficient policy of human resource management. Launching the monitoring and evaluation system to systematically improve the education system.” (EDS 2020, 2)

Human resource management was linked to the concept of efficiency as well as to the monitoring and evaluation system. Monitoring and evaluation allow better human resources management. In the interviews, an example of the combination of the efficient policy of human resource management and the monitoring and evaluation system were introduced. The rector of the public university presented their quality control system, in which video cameras were installed primarily to ensure the quality of teaching. In that interview, technical solutions such as video cameras were introduced as useful tools to raise the level of quality in teaching. To ensure the quality of teaching at the university, video cameras can be useful, the principal of the public university says:

“We also have video cameras everywhere. This may be strange in Europe, but we use it as a tool here for attendance and for the quality of teaching. If a person knows that someone is watching, that person will probably prepare better for the lesson.” (B.1, No 5)

Second, in EDS 2020 the concept of efficiency describes someone that has acquired the competencies to serve the country productively:

“…the main criterion of the education system’s efficiency will be a graduate who is capable of adequate reaction to challenges s/he encounters and competent enough in compliance with relevant economic, socio-cultural and political needs of the country. “(EDS 2020, 10)

The purpose of Soviet education was to train a citizen who was an ac-tive builder of a communist society. To serve the state and the communist system was the first purpose of education and training in the Soviet era. Since independence, this idea has been replaced by the idea of efficiency, which comes from outside the antecedent system, from the language of global education.

Does the borrowing of travelling reforms explain about the influence of global governance in Kyrgyzstan or more about the specific circumstances in Kyrgyzstan? The higher education system in Kyrgyzstan is increasingly subject to both formal and informal regulations from national and global sources. Examining the dynamics of the doxa in Kyrgyzstan’s higher education, the dynamics of national and global sources unfold. Although Kyrgyzstan is

borrowing concepts from travelling reforms for use in its national educational programs and development strategy, these borrowed concepts are modified to suit the local circumstances.

Lawn and Segerholm (2011, 36) argue that the technologies of governance are not only shaping the system, but also replacing it. The new form of education language is being welcomed to replace the Soviet era education terminology. In the doxa of higher education in Kyrgyzstan there was no need to use the Soviet concepts of education. In the Soviet model, education was considered by the state to be the prime agency for accomplishing the state’s goals in the planned Soviet economy. Since independence, new governing purposes, ideas and practices of higher education replaced Soviet thinking, including quality assurance and eval- uation systems operating as technologies of governance with the terminology of the market economy. These new definitions, concepts and categories not only excluded past categories, but also moved towards a global classification that enables better international cooperation. Furthermore, accepting these concepts into the Education Development Strategy, it illustrates the power of the technologies and agreements relating to the global governance of education.