Academic Promotion and Remuneration Policies in Private Higher Education Institutions in Kazakhstan

Project Title: Academic Promotion and Remuneration Policies in Private Higher Education Institutions in Kazakhstan

Implementation period: May – December 2023

Source of funding: Central Asian Research Centre for Education Innovation and Transformation

Description: Private universities in Kazakhstan operate in an increasingly competitive environment. Today, they are competing not only for talented students, but also for accomplished faculty who can contribute to quality in teaching, research, and service to the community. To recruit and retain talented faculty, private universities are developing new academic career structures and introducing new academic promotion and faculty compensation policies. In many cases, these new policies are based on international best practices and are rarely based on empirical data collected on the ground. This project aims to study academic career systems in private universities in Kazakhstan. In particular, it endeavours to construct a contextual and detailed understanding of how teachers working in private universities in Kazakhstan understand changing academic career systems and how their perceptions of these changes affect their academic performance and professional identity.