Views toward Education and the Impact of Education in Kazakhstan: What Are the Salient Factors?

Abstract In the literature on education in Central Asia, the existing scholarship largely focuses on reform processes and administrative issues in the post-Soviet context. There is thus a lack of scholarship that focuses on both how students view the purpose of education and the relationship between education and political engagement in the region. This article aims to address that gap in the literature by presenting findings from a survey we conducted at KIMEP University in Kazakhstan on the issue of how our sample views education and the impact of education on political issues. While we found that majoring in the social sciences, the more time spent at university, and selecting a Western democracy as the country the person admires most are all salient in terms of how a person views the beneficial impact of education on political issues, we found that majoring in the social sciences is the most important factor. Regarding the debate on the impact of education, our argument is that the type of education one receives (i.e. an individual’s major) is more salient than time spent at university.