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AbstractLiterature on the modern university suggest that top-ranked world-class universities are the ideal, and emerging nation-states should establish such institutions. Appearing at the top in international university rankings has become the aim as it guarantees attraction and retention of top talent. This study investigated the status of a university that was established to be world-class. To contribute to research and literature on the flagship university in emerging nations, the views of 321 professional administrative staff on whether Nazarbayev University (NU) is a top university were captured. First, a survey questionnaire was administered to 321 respondents. The second stage of the study involved 16 semi-structured interviews. Quantitative and qualitative data indicated positive experiences and perspectives among the respondents. These findings demonstrate that a university should be relevant to its society and not necessarily appear at the top in international rankings to be considered good and valuable by its people.

Purpose: This article examines the adverse impact of international economic sanctions on pedagogy. The article considers the contemporary times as a period of misinformation, false news, and untruths. Utilizing anti-hegemonic literature, international economic sanctions are viewed as neoliberalism’s instrument of coercion, a Western weapon used to enforce Western values on those with different perceptions toward the free market system. Design/Approach/Methods: This article utilizes critical scholarship to unmask authoritarian neoliberalism and a scoping review of sanctioned societies. Critical analytics are deployed to interpret and make sense of the dominant educational policy framework that appears to be against diversity. Findings: Neoliberalism has caused a crisis in pedagogy. Education is under siege as academics and scientific evidence are being disregarded. The call is for pedagogues from all over the world to continue to avail evidence to power by practicing critical education. Literature is utilized to propose critical pedagogy when scientific evidence is disputed, and non-Western epistemologies are considered anachronous. Originality/Value: Linking sanctions and neoliberalism is relatively novel, as is the contribution of the same lenses to authoritarian neoliberalism. The assault on divergent epistemologies is critical, and the defense of critical scholarship is every academic’s duty. The article joins conversations on the neoliberal assault on education and society.

The paper argues that the Warin Ukraine is promoting and accelerating the Westernization of the region's higher education. The paper employs Mignolo's (2011) geopolitics of knowledge as the theoretical framework to illustrate how internationalization promotes the adoption of Western/English liberal education and how the War in Ukraine is speeding up the process. Using focus groups, I capture conversations with local graduate students in Kazakhstan to demonstrate that Western education is acquired to 1) accelerate the de-Russification of Kazakhstan by moving away from the former imperial power, 2) use English to undermine the Russian language and cement Kazakhstan's independence from Russia, 3) acquire internationally recognized English credentials for global/Western competitiveness and modernity. The participants in this study framed their decision to pursue university graduate studies as freedom from the Soviet system, de-Russification, and modern development, underscoring the high value that some graduate students have for an English credential.

This critical interpretive paper deploys Walter Mignolo's geopolitics of knowledge concept to examine higher education internationalisation in Kazakhstan. Amidst growing concerns about economic and environmental sustainability, elitism and cognitive justice, among other critical issues, internationalisation remains a vital government policy. By tracing Kazakhstan's development since independence from the Soviet Union and focusing on key higher education development policy frameworks, the paper argues and illustrates that: (1) the internationalisation of higher education in Kazakhstan promotes a specific representation of the world that is considered universal and modern; (2) the internationalisation of higher education in Kazakhstan illustrates the existing hierarchical global higher education system that is dominated by the West as centres of knowledge and learning while allocating other countries peripheral roles; and (3) the geopolitics of knowledge concept enables the reading of higher education internationalisation beyond what is knowledge to who, why and where knowledge is produced. The data for this paper came from a qualitative study that involved 15 semi-structured interviews with graduates who studied abroad at Western universities through the government-sponsored Bolashak Scholarship. Three focus group sessions with 21 graduate students at Nazarbayev University complemented the interviews. The qualitative data suggest that Mignolo's geopolitics of knowledge offers a close-to-perfect description of the internationalisation of higher education in Kazakhstan. The conclusion drawn from this post-Soviet study is the universalisation of Western knowledge as nations utilise it for meaningful development, despite decolonial and cognitive justice concerns.

The article examines challenges faced by academics in Zimbabwe's universities. With a particular focus on university teaching and research, the article draws upon empirical evidence from a survey study and in-depth semi-structured interviews with academics from four public universities. The survey findings suggest that years of university teaching experience, area of specialisation, professional title, and education levels are not strong determinants on the academics' view towards political instability as one of the main issues impacting their work. The qualitative interview data provide further evidence on how all the different academics consider political instability as a factor negatively impacting university teaching and research. The most significant finding is that academics blame government policies. The article identifies the variegated market-oriented policies adopted in the university as the cause of the challenges and consequently calls for an interrogation of the policy from Zimbabwean academics and all other concerned stakeholders in higher education.

This study addresses educational disparities faced by socioeconomically disadvantaged students, particularly in accessing international higher education in the post-Soviet region, focusing on Kazakhstan. While studies of social class formation in developing countries are inconclusive, the literature overwhelmingly shows that high socioeconomic groups dominate access to international education. In this qualitative study, we conducted semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaires with 98 undergraduate and graduate students who accessed English language degrees at home and abroad. We used Bourdieu's conceptual tool of embodied, objectified, and institutionalised cultural capital to demonstrate how (1) educational resources in the home country, (2) English language proficiency, and (3) access to international English higher education function as pillars of social class reproduction. We argue that the process is skewed in favour of students from privileged classes and that the pursuit of meritocratic policies only reinforces elites' capital accumulation and promotes social stratification.

This article utilizes internal colonial analyses to explore and understand the difficult educational conditions students from peasantry background experience in Zimbabwe’s universities. The article proposes that the subordinate position and related educational experiences of peasantry students since the year 2000 are exploitative and to the advantage of the elite to such an extent that peasants are an internal colony. The analysis is informed by critical anti-colonial perspectives that observe the hegemonic tendencies of global and local capital in collusion with dictatorial elite nationalists. By use of a critical interpretive case study of purposefully sampled students and other relevant members of the university community from one public university, disturbing student experiences were excavated. Student narratives and experiences were analyzed using the constant comparative method and led to the conclusion that there is internal colonialism in Zimbabwe where an alliance of the state and the local and global corporate world are colluding to maintain their economic and political dominance. The article challenges those in education and academics that there is need for the decolonization of education by first identifying contemporary hegemonic forces and recognizing students from the peasantry as victims of the emerging kleptocratic capitalism.