Education and Skills Development under the CAREC Program

A Scoping Study

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• Publisher: Asian Development Bank
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9789292617493
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

The global employment and skills landscape is changing fast in the fourth industrial revolution. Investing in human development is essential to meet the needs of rapidly evolving competitive labor markets and achieve sustainable economic growth. Recognizing this, the CAREC Program's 2030 strategy features human development as one of its five operational priorities and specifies education as a key area of focus. This report examines how CAREC member countries can collaborate for education and skills development. It identifies important opportunities to harmonize education and skill standards, enhance student and worker mobility, strengthen labor market information and movement, and facilitate knowledge exchange.

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

A. New Strategy for the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Program

1.     The Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Program is a partnership of eleven countries and development partners working together to promote development through regional cooperation, leading to accelerated economic growth and poverty reduction.¹ The starting point for this scoping study is the new strategy of the CAREC program, CAREC 2030, which was approved by the 16th CAREC Ministerial Conference held in October 2017 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The strategy was prepared in response to the recommendations of the midterm review of CAREC 2020 and to key national, regional, and global developments expected to impact CAREC’s relevance and effectiveness going forward.² These included (i) the changing growth and macroeconomic context of CAREC countries, (ii) the changing global and regional trade environment, (iii) the emergence of new players in the region, and (iv) the adoption of new international development goals.

2.     CAREC 2030 retains the vision of its predecessor strategy, CAREC 2020, “Good Neighbors, Good Partners, and Good Prospects.” To achieve this vision, the mission statement for CAREC 2030 is “a regional cooperation platform to connect people, policies, and projects for shared and sustainable development.”

3.     To put this mission statement into practice, CAREC 2030 adopted a revised operational framework and increased the flexibility of its institutional framework. Compared with CAREC 2020, which grouped activities in four sectors (transport, energy, trade facilitation, and trade policy), the new operational framework groups activities in five clusters: (i) economic and financial stability; (ii) trade, tourism, and economic corridors; (iii) infrastructure and economic connectivity; (iv) agriculture and water; and (v) human development. The human development cluster covers education and health. Integrating the use of information and communication technology (ICT) across the spectrum of CAREC operations will be a cross-cutting priority.

4.     CAREC 2030 stresses that “entry into new areas will be gradual and incremental; it will be tailored to the resources and capabilities made available by all member countries and development partners; and it will be backed by sound institutional arrangements and capacity development to ensure effective and timely execution of operations.”³

5.     In addition to CAREC 2030, the importance of education and skills is highlighted in recent reports of CAREC’s development partners such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank. ADB’s 2018 Asian Development Outlook, whose theme is the impact of technology on employment, highlights the importance of education and skills. New technologies are expected to improve productivity, lower production costs, and raise demand. However, they will also require countries to implement significant education reforms and increase the flexibility of labor markets.⁴ The recent World Bank report on the changing nature of work echoes these findings, noting that changing technology has disproportionately reduced demand for less skilled workers, while raising the premium on high-order cognitive skills. Building the skills currently in demand in the labor market requires strong human capital foundations and lifelong learning. Investing in human capital must be a priority for countries to take full advantage of the changing nature of work.⁵ These reports provide an important backdrop for CAREC’s proposed approach to education and skills.

B. Objectives and Scope of the Study

6.     The overall objective of this scoping study is to assess the potential of CAREC as a regional platform to promote regional education and skills initiatives in the region. The scoping study is intended to help identify opportunities for enhancing and expanding cooperation among member countries in the education sector. This, in turn, is expected to contribute to increasing quality and access to education and skills programs, as well as improving the efficiency and effectiveness of higher and professional education; and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in the region.

7.     The purpose of this study is to map out the scope for establishing regional cooperation in education and skills under CAREC. To place the topic in context, the report distinguishes between three levels: (i) country-level cooperation, (ii) multicountry cooperation, and (iii) regional cooperation and integration (RCI). Country-level cooperation is defined as taking place within one country, for example a project to upgrade selected educational institutions. Multicountry cooperation is defined as activities to share experiences or address common concerns among several countries, for example, a series of workshops to discuss new approaches to curriculum development. Compared with multicountry activities, RCI is a more fundamental process that facilitates transactions and flows among countries. In the transport sector, an RCI program might build roads or transport corridors that straddle more than one country, and improve border and customs procedures to improve the flow of vehicles and goods.

8.     In the education sector, RCI could mean promoting policies and measures that improve the flow of knowledge and skills between countries, mainly in the form of labor, teaching professionals, or students. The improved flows would be expected to support and strengthen the functioning of CAREC countries’ labor markets and the movement of skilled personnel and knowledge across borders, thus enhancing the performance of their economies. These flows would generally involve professionals or students engaged in higher education, or skilled or semiskilled labor. For this reason, this report focuses on higher and professional education, labor markets, and skills.

9.     To review the scope for cooperation comprehensively, this report considers a wide range of issues. The report is presented in 11 chapters. Chapter 2 discusses the diversity of the CAREC countries. Chapters 3 and 4 review key challenges in higher education, labor markets, and TVET. Chapter 5 discusses the benefits of regional cooperation. Chapter 6 reviews other models of regional cooperation in education, including those of the European Union (EU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and ADB-led activities. This is followed by a discussion in Chapter 7 of potential partnerships, in particular with regional universities. Chapter 8 reviews institutional considerations under CAREC 2030 compared with CAREC 2020. Chapter 9 summarizes strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) in a brief SWOT analysis. Chapter 10 summarizes the highlights of the CAREC regional education workshop, followed in Chapter 11 by the report’s conclusions and recommendations.

CHAPTER 2
Diversity of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Countries

10. The CAREC countries have many similarities. The fact that in the past the education and skill systems of many CAREC countries were harmonized under the former Soviet Union is a strength and offers a potential foundation for improving coordination between these countries. The region also has high adult literacy rates, and high primary and secondary enrollment for both genders (except in Afghanistan and Pakistan). At the same time, CAREC countries are also diverse, in particular, compared with the member countries of other regional cooperation programs such as the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Program.⁶ The GMS countries benefit from both geographical proximity and relatively close cultural and linguistic affinity.

11. Partly due to their diversity, their relative physical isolation and sparse populations, and the resultant lack of large concentrations of economic activity, cooperation in education and skills has so far been weak in the CAREC region. This has prevented CAREC countries from maximizing the potential of their human resources. In framing the scope for cooperation among CAREC countries in higher and professional education and TVET, it is, therefore, important to understand both the similarities and the diversities.

A. Income Levels and Natural Resource Dependence

12. The CAREC countries include upper-middle-income countries (Azerbaijan, the People’s Republic of China [PRC], Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan), lower-middle-income countries (the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan) and low-income countries (Afghanistan and Tajikistan),⁷ major petroleum exporters (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan) and countries highly reliant on petroleum imports (the PRC).

B. Labor Migration Patterns

13. The region includes countries with widely divergent patterns of labor migration and reliance on remittances, both labor exporters and importers. Kazakhstan is a net importer of labor, mainly from neighboring countries; while the Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan rely significantly on labor exports for foreign exchange revenue and employment. Workers from Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan migrate mainly to the Russian Federation; workers from Azerbaijan to Turkey; and workers from Afghanistan and Pakistan migrate mainly to the Middle East.⁸ Pakistan is dependent on migrant remittances for about 5% of gross domestic product, while in the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan, the corresponding figure is over 33%.⁹

C. A Wide Range of Regional Groupings

14. The 11 CAREC countries are also members of different and only partly overlapping regional groupings. Seven countries (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) were part of the former Soviet Union, with which Mongolia was also closely affiliated. Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic belong to the Eurasian Economic Union, which is led by the Russian Federation and offers incentives and social benefits to support labor migration within the union. Afghanistan and Pakistan are members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. Projects are also being planned or implemented under PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative. These include the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor and many infrastructure projects traversing Central Asia.

D. Divergent Education Traditions

15. Although they have moved in different directions in the past 25 years, the education systems of the former Soviet Union republics are still closely aligned with one another as well as the education system in the Russian Federation. Although the Russian language continues to be a lingua franca in many CAREC countries, local languages are becoming increasingly important.

16. At the same time, several CAREC countries are looking to align themselves with European standards of higher and professional education. Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan already aligned their higher education systems with the EU’s Bologna Process, which aims at raising the quality of higher education qualifications and ensuring that these are comparable across European countries.¹⁰ The process led to the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan also have plans to upgrade their higher education systems to meet the Bologna Process’ standards. The Russian Federation is already a member.¹¹

17. The CAREC countries’ TVET and higher education systems are also linked to different patterns of labor migration (para. 13), as well ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Executive Summary
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Diversity of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Countries
• Chapter 3: Challenges In Higher Education
• Chapter 4: Challenges in Labor Markets and Technical and Vocational Education and Training
• Chapter 5: Benefits of Regional Cooperation
• Chapter 6: Examples of Regional Cooperation in Education
• Chapter 7: Potential Partnerships
• Chapter 8: Institutional Considerations
• Chapter 9: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats Analysis
• Chapter 10: CAREC Regional Education Workshop
• Chapter 11: Conclusions and Recommendations
• Appendix: Key Education and Human Resource Indicators for the CAREC Countries
• References
• Footnotes
• Back Cover