In the discourse of the quality, the quality assurance and evaluation practices were discussed. Unquestionably, the higher education landscape in Kyrgyzstan has been reshaped by introduction of the quality assurance and evaluation (QAU) practices in education. The concepts of indicators and benchmarks received attention from the policymakers of Kyrgyzstan, at the same time when travelling reforms were introduced. As written in an earlier sections discourses of creating, regulating and governing or, in other words, monitoring the higher education of Kyrgyzstan has been discussed. Whether it should be based on measurable indicators – ‘governing by numbers’ (e.g. Rose 1991) – is debated in the field of higher education.
In the policy debate, those scholars promoting the establishment of the National Testing Center argued that the institutionally based admission practices allow for corrupt, non-transparent and discriminatory practices to penetrate to distribution of government scholarships. With quality assurance and evaluation reforms, corrupt practices are able to be solve. (DeYoung 2011 & Heyneman 2008.) In the interviews when the usefulness of that travelling reform was justified by policy makers, the NST was tamed to a local problem, corruption.
Now, the problematic question is no longer whether quality assurance practices are needed in Kyrgyzstan, but how they should be implemented. For respondens the need for a quality assurance system is not questioned, even if justifications differ depending on whom the importance of the reforms is justified. Countries’ practices in educational evaluation range from inspection to QAE systems and comparative exchanges of information. The importance of the QAE system was not questioned in the field of higher education in Kyrgyzstan.
In the quality discourse, actors from the field of higher education argued that the evaluation system is needed to control the disorder of the higher education system. The centrality of skills, competencies and standards in QAE work has emerged in tandem with economic and society changes in Kyrgyzstan. In the Soviet education system, there was no systematic quality assurance system. In the interviews, the quality assurance system was understood as standards and frameworks for the quality of higher education:
“In the past, there was no quality evaluation in Kyrgyzstan as we understand it now, which led to some chaos. As soon as we started developing frameworks and standards for understanding quality, some
understanding in the academic society emerged, of what it is, what it should be like, and how it should be assessed, and this led to some results.” (A, No 16)
From the point of view of the governance of Kyrgyz higher education, the Education Development Strategy 2020 defined the role of the QAE to be central. In EDS 2020 the concept of monitoring was used to illustrate the QAE system and its current weaknesses. The goal was to increase the responsibility of managers and practitioners in the outcomes of their action. EDS 2020 explains the potentiality of the QAE system to produce data for better guiding monitoring and controlling of the system:
“The current monitoring and evaluation are restricted to overseeing the proper implementation of decrees and regulations. There is little monitoring and evaluation of the quality of education. The current system is also not inductive to making mid-level managers and practitioners feel responsible for the outcomes of their actions.”
While the official education documents from the government highlighted the importance of the regulations behind the QAE practices, at the universities the QAE was seen as an opportunity to increase control over the teachers. Increasing the external control of teachers was described as a new opportunity that quality assurance mechanisms are bringing. The interviewees argued how without quality evaluation, it is impossible to control the whole education system and especially the teachers’ work:
“Should quality be assessed? Why and how? There must be some metrics for this. If you can’t measure, you can’t control. How do we do it? We look at the results of exams. If a lot of students are failing the course, there might be a problem with the teacher…” (B.2, No 2)
Conventional thinking about the QAE system supported the controlling effect of the system. The use of measurable indicators and standards resonate with the local understanding of control – evidence-based practices increase the reliability of the education system.
‘Achieving high quality’ is highly politicized in the discourse on quality as the achievement of the quality presupposes policy measures which are not self- evidently acceptable. Conceptualization and contextualization of the quality of higher education in the official education policy documents by the government of Kyrgyzstan follow-up the purposes of the Bologna process and other international recommendations. When the official education policy documents represent operationalizations of higher education quality assurance systems – lack of
uniform criteria and standards, they do not define how these problems should be solved, only what should be done. In the official education policy documents, the lack of the quality assurance and evaluation system is a problem in itself:
“Inefficient system of quality assurance. Two of the existing quality assurance mechanisms - licensing and certification - do not bring much effect because of the fact that they are not used as tools to monitor quality and improvement. There are no appropriate criteria or standards for evaluation of higher education institutions from the perspective of an independent accreditation institute.” (EDS 2020, 25).
Consequently, I assume that the current political and national needs of the higher education are linked to the purposes of the quality assurance and evaluations to increase credibility in implementing international education reforms. For example, the ‘low quality’ of the professionals at the universities and inadequate training for personal staff are presented as the weaknesses of the higher education system (EDS 2020, 25). However, the Education Development Strategy 2020 is only naming those problems, not describing how to solve them. The discourse on quality assurance and evaluation focuses on justifying the need for the monitoring and evaluation system.
The Berlin Communiqué (2003) sets out the agenda for the roles of individual institutions and national states in relation to the quality assurance and evaluation:
“Ministers emphasize the importance of all elements of the Bologna Process for establishing the European Higher Education Area and stress the need to intensify the efforts at institutional, national and European levels.”
The self-regulative element of higher education quality control becomes visible in the Education Development Strategy 2020 of Kyrgyzstan. The absence of the quality assurance and monitoring system is not the only dilemma of the nation state, but also the responsibility of the higher education institutions. The pressing need for the establishment of ‘quality control departments’ in all higher education institutions is emphasized in the EDS 2020. Following this logic, the basic national need for establishment of quality control departments at the university level is to create a professional quality assurance system. According to the Berlin Com-muniqué, the quality assurance system must be developed at local, national and European levels. The criteria and methods must be shared. These elements are written down in the Education Development Strategy. One of the reasons for this is that the ideological and methodological orientation of the quality assurance and evaluation have been adopted from the European principles.