Favour Before Merit at Turkmen Universities

President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov’s instructions to universities to base admissions policies solely on academic merit seem to have been ignored.

As the admissions process closed on August 25, local observers said that as in previous years, many new students had gained entrance through personal connections and bribery. 

Earlier the same month, the president had told a cabinet meeting that he wanted to see places in higher education offered to the most gifted young people who showed the potential to make a contribution to society. 

Since coming to power in 2007, Berdymuhammedov has restored five-year university education, brought in new subjects, and spoken of the need to raise teaching standards. This year, for example, the figure of nearly 5,500 for new admissions is higher than last year’s thanks to the opening of two new universities in the towns of Dashoguz in northern Turkmenistan and Turkmenbashi in the west. 

However, local observers say the admissions process is as flawed and corrupt as ever. 

“Admissions are based not on knowledge, ability and talent, but exclusively on money and knowing the right people,” according to a lecturer at the Azadi National Institute of World Languages, who requested anonymity. 

An assistant lecturer at an Ashgabat university said the list of names for this year’s entrants included relatives of staff in institutions like the prosecutor general’s office and the Ministry of National Security. 

A media-watcher agreed, adding, “The children of senior officials are given the green light everywhere, and that often means paying bribes.”

An observer in Dashoguz said that the scope for corruption had actually increased this year, and spread to educational institutions previously regarded as respectable. 

“Since the Turkish lecturers left and local lecturers teachers took over at International Turkmen-Turkish University, it has become like the rest,” the observer said. “Apparently the same is true of enrollment at the Ashgabat branch of Russia’s Gubkin Oil and Gas University, as examinations are being conduced not by [Russian] lecturers, but by local officials and oil and gas industry chiefs.”

The parents of prospective students say corruption is so endemic that it deprives the most deserving young people of opportunities. 

“My daughter did very well when she spent a year studying at a school in Virginia, but when she tried to enroll with the English-language department at the Turkmen National Institute of World Languages in Ashgabat, she failed the exam,” said a woman in Lebap region in eastern Turkmenistan, who believes her daughter was turned down because the family could not afford to pay a bribe. 

This article was produced as part of IWPR’s News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.