Phil Baty: we are witnessing more and more success of Kazakhstan’s education

The world is expecting results of Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2027. How many Kazakhstan's universities will be at the top of the list this year? What is the secret of the rise of higher education of the country? What is the mission of a modern university and what to rely on in its development? We had an opportunity to talk to Phil BATY, the Сhief Global Affairs and Chief Operating Officer of THE, Director General of Education World Forum.

–   Since 2019, Times Higher Education has been interacting with Kazakhstan's higher education system, serving in many ways as a navigator and catalyst for internal reforms within the country's universities. Looking back over these years, how has this process developed, and what key characteristics of our region's higher education system would you highlight?

– It has been truly inspiring to work with the Kazakhstan’s education sector over many years – with that engagement intensifying in recent years as the nation’s strong, international education ambitions have intensified and as we have witnessed more and more success. Initially, the interactions were focussed on supporting a very small number of leading Kazahstan’s universities to understand the World University Rankings, to better harness the rankings data and benchmarks to support their strategic goals and secure their place among the world’s elite group of research universities.

A major shift came just two or three years ago, when we agreed through the Ministry of Science and Higher Education to encourage a larger group of Kazakhstan’s universities to join the ranking system, embrace trusted international performance benchmarks, and use that, as you say, as a catalyst for change and as a strategic framework to benchmark success and monitor improvements.

In the forthcoming Times Higher Education World University Rankings, out on 30 September, we will have 10 Kazakhstan’s universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings – that is double the number since last year, and up from just three in 2020. This is a remarkable achievement given that the rankings have a high entry requirement – only globally-focussed research universities can join the rankings.

In addition to that, we have many more “reporter” institutions from Kazakhstan in the rankings – these are institutions who submit data for benchmarking and strategic support, but that do not yet make the entry criteria. But that’s a great sign that the most trusted international standards and benchmarks are now well embedded in the Kazakhstan’s higher education and research system.

The most significant changes, and the most exciting, have been the growing strength of the nation’s research base – vital for a strong economy and a clear place in the world – and the dramatic rise of international collaboration and international networking. It really has been inspiring to monitor and recognise this.

– As far as we know, THE is building a unified global evaluation system. How do global THE indicators adapt to the specific characteristics of the developing university systems in Kazakhstan and Central Asia as a whole, where teaching functions and large-scale academic research have historically been separated?

– The THE World University Rankings this year evaluated 3,146 universities from 131 countries in deep detail, so inevitably we have to evaluate everyone in a fair and consistent manner, and that does mean that specific regional contexts, from funding disparities to sector structural differences, are hard to take into account. The idea with the world rankings is that we are evaluating a certain type of global, research-intensive university, that operates on the world stage and has shared characteristics with others in other nations: publishing research international journals, recruiting students and faculty from a global talent pool; collaborating on research projects across borders; working with industrial partners at a global scale.

This does mean that Kazakhstan’s and other Central Asian universities are inherently disadvantaged by the system – the separation of teaching and research doesn’t fit well with a model designed for universities where teaching and research take place together, hand in hand. So it is even more impressive to see strong progress in the world rankings for Kazakhstan despite this inherited structural misalignment.

While we are clear the world university rankings deploy a unified global system of evaluation for all, we are keen at THE to ensure that we are sympathetic to different university missions, cultures and contexts.

So we have confirmed that we will publish annually a new Central Eurasia Ranking, just for nations in the Central Asia and surrounding mainly Turkic nations. This will use the same trusted metrics and benchmarks of the World Rankings, but with different entry criteria and metric weightings, to provide a more nuanced and contextual view.

In addition, definitely, we have the entirely separate Sustainability Impact Ratings (formerly the Impact Rankings) which deploy a very different set of metrics to understand social and economic impact, and which are much more sympathetic to national and regional missions, and different cultures and contexts, as they put less weight on world-class research.

– Kazakhstan and Central Asia overall demonstrate impressive progress in the Impact Rankings. Based on your research, through what internal transformations have regional universities managed to make this qualitative leap so quickly?

– The great thing about the Sustainability Impact Ratings, is that universities can make quicker progress. The traditional world rankings focus on research excellence, which can take many, many years to develop and nurture, and a long time to show up in the global research literature and databases. They also relay heavily on reputation and academic prestige. Kazakhstan’s progress there is strong and clear, but it is going to take time.

With the Impact Ratings, we look at four key aspects where a university has social impact and contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: through its teaching; its research; its outreach and activities in the community, for example working with local companies and government; and through its stewardship – how it manages its own resources.

So, there are more levers a university can pull to success in the Impact Ratings – improving their internal governance, putting in place new policies and processes in alignment with the Impact Ratings criteria, such as on energy consumption, food waste etc, or putting on more specific activity to engage the community in university projects.

So I think the big change that the Impact Ratings have supported within universities in Kazakhstan – and worldwide – is simply to improve internal data visibility: helping ensure all the vital things a university does to support social and economic impact is recorded and is visible at the strategic level, so that remedial action can be taken. On top of that, of course, making good practice visible to the world through the rankings, also fosters collaboration, and sharing, which drives up performance.

 – In recent years, THE has substantially updated the World University Rankings (WUR) methodology by introducing WUR 3.0 with new indicators covering citation patterns, industry income, and open science. Which of these new metrics present the greatest difficulties for universities in Kazakhstan, and where do they most frequently lose points?

– The biggest challenge to Kazakhstan of the more recent set of additional performance metrics is around patents. This metric – which looks at the university research cited in patents – is a way to understand how much of a universities’ research is translated into intellectual property, and turned into real-world applications. It is a strong way of understanding that “third mission” of technology-transfer and economic impact.

No doubt due to historical structural challenges, it is on this metric that Kazakhstan is furthest behind against the world averages. The success of Kazakh universities in attracting research funding from industry is solid, largely in line with global averages, but the gap is in turning that research funding into intellectual properly for economic impact.

– As someone who has managed the WUR and stood at the inception of the Impact Rankings, you have observed from the inside the large-scale transformation of the role of universities – from purely academic centers to drivers of sustainable development. Today, the university community globally and in our region is also actively engaged in this global process. How, in your observation, does the global academic sector strike a balance between traditional metrics and new demands for social impact?

– There is no question that there’s a powerful, renewed focus on universities right across the world on the impact they have on the world – their public good, their contribution to social and economic development, to tackling the world’s grand challenges, such as climate change and inequality, and making the world a better place. This is particularly strong in the Western world where there has been a perception among many that universities had lost sight of this vital mission, and where the public and prominent politicians are questioning the value of universities, and challenging their public funding.

So on that basis, we are seeing more and more universities look to demonstrate their social impact, their public good. And even where such pressures do not exist, for example, in parts of East Asia, there’s a clear sense that universities are the key to a sustainable future and a better world. So the very large participation in THE’s Sustainability Impact Ratings demonstrates that powerful hunger to evidence impact, and to have it recognised and made visible. For some universities, this has become their most important of the rankings, their strategic priority. For some of the traditional leading research universities, they are engaged in both the world rankings and impact rankings, seeking to show that world class research universities are well placed to demonstrate real-world impact too.

I think the best approach for any university is to never chase rankings and rankings metrics for their own sake, but be clear about your individual, institutional values, mission and priorities, and then seek the metrics that fit with your goals.

As I often say, the tail should not wag the dog, the dog should wag the tail. Times Higher Education is delighted to have a vast, comprehensive range of performance metrics and benchmarks, across teaching, research, knowledge transfer, resources, internationalisation, sustainability, social and economic impact and academic reputation. We work with universities to chose their own personalised set of metrics that best suit their clear strategic goals.

– The Industry Income indicator measures a university's contribution to the economy. How effectively are universities in Central Asia, and Kazakhstan in particular, building bridges with the real sector of the economy and transnational companies compared to global leaders? Typically, business can be very inert in this regard. What strategy, in your opinion, is most effective here?

– As previously mentioned, there is a real challenge here: while Kazakhstan’s universities are broadly in line with the world average in terms of their success in winning research funding from business and industry, there is a real gap in converting that industry-funded research into real-world commercial impact (as measured through patent citations).

Where universities are most successful in this regard is East Asia, and particularly South Korea. Korea has seen a massive economic shift to become the most knowledge-intensive nation in the world, I large part by ensuring its universities work very closely with industry, converting research into innovation and impact to drive economic success. It has been an extraordinary success story.

To really succeed here, university sectors will need a change of culture, being seen as part of the economic success of a nation, not something separate or aloof.

It needs focussed policy attention: businesses need better incentives to trust and collaborate with universities on research projects, bureaucratic barriers around intellectual property and income need to be removed, and universities need to open themselves up more to be closer to the market.

– Securing a spot in top THE rankings often becomes a matter of national importance for countries in the region. Where is the line where the pursuit of positions in global indices begins to distort a university's true academic mission and research freedom?

– The Times Higher Education designed its World University Rankings in very close partnership with university leaders across the world, to ensure that progress in the rankings reflected real world progress.

A university succeeds in the THE world rankings, for example, by producing more, and crucially more impactful research, producing and disseminating new knowledge.

It improves if it is more successful in attracting international talent, both staff and students, and by collaborating across boarders on shared global research challenges.

It succeeds by attracting more competitive funding, by producing more research that has an economic and social impact.

So a top spot in the rankings is vital for global visibility, global reputation and brand recognition, which breeds its own success. But it is also vital in terms of the real world power of universities to contribute to the success of a nation.

But of course, the world rankings are designed specifically for global research-intensive universities. They would not be suitable, for example, for a regional teaching-focussed institution, or a very specialist school. If a university aspires to be a world class research university, on the world stage, attracting global talent and addressing global challenges, then the THE world rankings are the best and most trusted framework in the world for benchmarking and strategic support. But the world rankings are not for all. We rank just over 2,000 universities, but there are more than 20,000 universities in the world. Many are quite rightly focussed on different things where different metrics would be appropriate.

Most nations, including Kazakhstan, adapt a very sensible, balanced “mixed economy” model: where they have some universities funded and supported to compete on the world stage in the world rankings – vital for national talent attraction, talent retention and innovation. And others have more regional or national missions, and others are highly specialised. That’s a healthy mix in a diverse national system.

I’d say clearly – no university should pervert or distort its mission purely in pursuit of rankings success. Ranking success should follow a clear strategy.

– How do you envision Kazakhstan's potential as a new educational hub? What trends over the next 5 to 10 years will determine which regional players secure a place in the global top 500 and which remain purely local players?

– Kazakhstan is already emerging as a strong hub for international talent and international collaboration, not least through real success in attracting international campuses through Transnational Education arrangements. This, combined with the strengthening of its own national universities, the enriching of the nation’s research base, and the growing international visibility of flagship universities like Nazarbayev University, all combine to give real confidence of continued improvement and strong future success. On top of that, it is superbly placed, literally straddling both east and west, well placed to capitalise on the strengths of universities in both the Asian and European continents – become a central conduit, as it was centuries ago, for the flow of talent and ideas.

It all comes down to political ambition, and I’d say funding: world class universities, and the world class talent that they accommodate and nurture, requires sustained investment and political support.

– Phil, thank you for a very insightful conversation and for contributing to the discussion on this vital topic for every university!

Interviewed by Veronika Koreshkova

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ABSTRACT

In an interview with our magazine, Phil Baty, Director for Global Affairs and Chief Operating Officer of Times Higher Education, and Director General of the Education World Forum, analyzes the transformation of Kazakhstan's higher education system. He examines its strengths and vulnerabilities in detail, while outlining the key conditions for universities to compete successfully on the international stage.