The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Kazakhstan has submitted a draft law on the promotion of restricted funds, an instrument used worldwide to promote the activities of educational and cultural institutions, but still little used in Central Asia. The intention is to promote the growth of “social charity” at all levels.
Astana () – Endowments are the best guarantee for the development of higher education and science in any country or region of the world. Just remember the Nobel Prize funds. Public education systems in Central Asia also depend on them to a certain extent. Endowments have been crucial for these purposes since medieval times, such as the donation of Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII of England, which allowed the creation of a chair of theology at Oxford, which gave rise to the glory of the most prestigious university in the world. Similar practices were already in use in ancient times, such as when the philosopher Plato bequeathed all his assets to the professors of the academy he had founded, until the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius decided to guarantee the continuity of philosophical studies in Athens with a special endowment.
All countries outside Europe have benefited from these funds in modern times, during and after colonial times, but in Central Asia there are rather tenuous vestiges of this essential instrument. In Tajikistan and Turkmenistan there is no trace of endowment, although since 2005 there has been a “Eurasian Foundation for Central Asia” (EFCA), created to “increase civic activism, develop private entrepreneurship, education and public administration”, with offices in Almaty, Bishkek, Oš and Dushanbe.
In Kyrgyzstan, the first protected capital fund appeared in 2023, based on the Razzakov State Technical University. In Uzbekistan, the need for such initiatives has been talked about since 2018, but the first facility was opened in 2021, at the Tashkent State Law University; that year, the first private university in the Uzbek capital, the New University of Uzbekistan (NewUU), was also born on the initiative of President Šavkat Mirziyoyev, following the example of similar activities in Kazakhstan, such as the Nazarbaev University (NU), although the funding of the Uzbek institute is rather irregular, unlike the Kazakh one.
In fact, Kazakhstan is the Central Asian country that has most used charitable funds for education, and there are currently about twenty of them supporting 116 institutes across the country, according to estimates by the Ranking.kz agency. Analysts point to the success of some of these organizations, such as the NU itself, the Nazarbaev Intellectual School (NIS), the Republican Physico-Mathematical School Rfms, and the Heart Center medical endowment, a national cardiosurgical scientific center. The NU and NIS enjoy capital of more than a billion dollars, the others have a much more modest financial level, although the Rfms can boast of having trained a considerable number of high-level specialists.
In an attempt to provide these institutions with more guarantees, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Astana has submitted to the Mažilis, the national parliament, a bill “On protected capital funds”, which is expected to be voted on later this year. It is hoped to create an atmosphere that will encourage the country’s wealthiest and most responsible citizens to contribute to such initiatives, perhaps to finance the institutes where they themselves studied, or where their children and grandchildren are now. Indeed, one of the principles of the endowment is the gratitude of graduates to their Alma Mater, as is the tradition at Oxford and Harvard themselves, on the part of those whose studies have allowed them to reach high levels and professional success.
In Central Asia, such social and educational glory is still a distant horizon, but in Kazakhstan they hope to quickly get closer to it by preparing various measures to reward the activities of patrons, not only from the ruling castes, but from all social spheres. As experts in the field say, the growth of “social charity” does not depend on the will of the rich and powerful, but on the demand and energy of the whole society, the middle classes and those who want to live a qualitatively more interesting and productive life.
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