Higher education faces increased challenges as technological development gains momentum
«It used to be that one ministry covered preschool, secondary education, vocational training, higher education. Basically from the birth of the child till the child is ready to go into adult life. There was only one ministry responsible for that. And preschool and secondary education have their own procedures, and their own regulation, whereas higher education is more autonomous and more creative subject to self-regulation. It is closer to real life. That is why having all of that - all these spheres with different goals - it was very difficult to have it inside a single ministry,» said Nurbek addressing a session during the EdTech Forum.
Speaking about the challenges in the current system, Nurbek highlighted the increasing gap between those who have access to education and those who have not. The COVID-19 pandemic has broadened that gap.
According to UNICEF data, globally more than 616 million students remain affected by full or partial school closures as the COVID-19 pandemic nears its two-year mark. UNICEF says it caused a «nearly insurmountable scale of loss to children’s schooling.»
In low-income and middle-income countries, learning losses to school closures have left up to 70 percent of 10-year-olds unable to read or understand a simple text, up from 53 percent pre-pandemic. But learning loss is not the only consequence of the pandemic, because school closures have impacted children’s mental health, reduced their access to a regular source of nutrition, and increased their risk of abuse.
»We can see there is indeed a great gap. It is not even a gap. It is an abyss already; we can see the gap between the people who do have access to education and those who don’t have access. So, pre-pandemic assessment and post-pandemic assessment show a bigger gap in competencies in illiteracy and access to education,« said Nurbek.
According to the 2020 national report published annually by the Information and Analytical Center of the Kazakh Ministry of Education, the outbreak of the pandemic was in fact a challenge and an opportunity.
«2020 gave a powerful boost to the education digital content development, a huge number of educational programs and online courses have been developed and updated. The pandemic has also raised issues about equity and access to education, as well as student mental health and emotional support questions,» said the report.
The experts say the digital format of learning put the spotlight on the issues of academic integrity, for example, the ways to monitor students during exams virtually, issues of equity and access to education on the example of students, who are at greater risk of increased vulnerability.
Increased competition between traditional education providers and big tech companies
Speaking about the challenges and risks facing the country's higher education system, Minister Nurbek said there are three of them. First is increased competition between traditional education providers and big tech companies.
«Whereas until recently, the higher education was mostly following national standards, a bit Kazakhstan educational standard Russian or German educational standard. And there were some attempts to harmonize it through the Bologna process, for instance, credit recognition, mutual recognition of diplomas, the European credit transfer scheme, and so on. Now, I think we are seeing an interesting trend in the world where we are seeing supra-national standards. We already see that there are big platforms on the market like Coursera. And there is this big race to provide educational services and big tech has joined this race. For instance, Google, Microsoft, they are creating their own supranational global standard,» said the minister.
These companies are involved in the creation of their own certification and training systems.
«Whereas in the past, we had an education which was qualified, certified, it was mostly provided through universities or vocational schools, now we see that other nonclassical educators have joined that race - gaming companies, for instance, LEGO education which earns more money,» he said.
These companies understand the new reality and new trends, he noted, which is now less about the transfers of some knowledge but capturing attention for long enough to make this education process happen. Understanding this trend, however, gives these companies a competitive advantage.
«A big problem for higher educational institutions right now is that they are no longer a monopoly to provide formal certified education. They are not alone in it anymore,» he said.
In fact, the pace of technological development and innovations has reduced the amount of time it takes for knowledge to become obsolete. Some traditional higher education institutions are just not ready to keep up with this pace.
Limits of infrastructure
The second big issue, according to Nurbek, is the limits of infrastructure.
According to World Bank, there are now around 220 million tertiary students in the world. In Kazakhstan, this number is 575,511, according to the Bureau of National Statistics. The highest number is in Almaty (172,224), Shymkent (82,840) and Nur-Sultan (62,788).
But this is a small share of people.
«Big tech understood very quickly. Now, they are trying to provide informal opportunities for millions of people so that they can extend this talent pool to go beyond simply the graduates of higher educational institutions,» he said.
Universities can address infrastructural limitations by embarking on digital transformation – this requires fewer resources and less finance.
Changes in labor market
The higher education system should also meet the rapidly changing labor market trends and demands. We are witnessing how fast-emerging technologies and changes affect the organization of work causing jobs that involve routine tasks and that are easy to automate to disappear while creating new ones that involve tasks demanding skills that are non-routine and where people are still better than machines.
«We have been reviewing this mechanism for the last four or five years. And what we've seen is the skills-based economy concept. It hit Kazakhstan about 10 years ago. The landscape has changed, every two-three years the demands are changing. The whole national qualification framework mechanism is dragging behind. It takes about four to five years to design a new curriculum. So the skills emerge, demand is defined for the education system and for the national qualification system to absorb that change, and comprehend that change,» said Nurbek.
Four or five years for the system to adapt is too long, and therefore it requires a flexible solution to bridge the labor market demands and higher education.
Growing importance of soft skills
According to Jonathan Slater, an expert in public service reform, including in education, and Visiting Professor at King’s College London, a combination of digital skills, literacy, numeracy, and soft skills is how people can adapt to a rapidly changing labor market.
He also found a strong correlation between mathematical abilities and the income of a person.
«We have done a lot of analysis in England that looks at the mathematical abilities of young people and compares how much money they earn in the world of employment, based on how well they did in math at school. And there is a very strong correlation. The better you do in math, the more economic potential you have as an individual. A fundamental part of the reform efforts in the United Kingdom in the last 20 years was improving the basic numeracy of all young people,» said Slater.
Besides some fundamental skills, the importance of soft skills is rising tremendously – a key difference between humans and machines.
«But more than that, they [referring to employers] want what might be called softer skills. They want creativity. They want teamwork. They want communication, they want people who listen to each other. They want people who are kind to each other,» said the British expert.
What machines will never have, he said, is the ability to empathize, the ability to listen to each other and care for each other. This is the challenge for education is to grow young and older people who care about each other, and are kind to each other, more than anything else.
Written by Assel Satubaldina