НАУЧНО-ПРАКТИЧЕСКАЯ КОНФЕРЕНЦИЯ «30-ЛЕТИЕ НЕЗАВИСИМОСТИ КАЗАХСТАНА: ДОСТИЖЕНИЯ И ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ» own sport facilities. Teaching staff, on the other hand, is interested in smaller groups where it is possible to
provide individual tasks and pay more attention to students in order to provide educational services of the
higher quality and this is something that students and their parents expect from HEIs, but this leads to decrease
of the profit. It should be noticed that education fee in Kazakhstan today is relatively more expensive than in
European countries. According to UNESCO almost 80 thousand of Kazakhstani people were studying abroad
because it was cheaper. [4]
Challenge number four might be observed in the context of Hofstede’s cultural dimension model. According
to this model Kazakhstan has a low score on individualism and high scores on both power distance and
uncertainty avoidance indexes. This means the following: 1) school graduates choose major according to the
preferences of parents or following the advice from elderly relatives; 2) school graduates choose major with
low entrance score because it is more important to save family budget in the short-run; 3) school graduates
focus more on passing the entrance test rather than on critical thinking, analytical and soft-skills. No surprise
that students in the 1
st
year are unable to make logical conclusions, have poor skills both in foreign languages
and IT and are physically weak. In order to overcome this challenge the whole school program should be
revised. School attendants must be open-minded, know how to argue, be flexible and innovative. Unfortunately,
the majority of them say that our education today tests their memory, not the intelligence. When it comes to
university newcomers have difficulties with making choices of both subjects and teachers which is a reflection
high power distance index. Even though all Kazakhstani HEIs have introduced new position of advisors, it
is still not always possible to choose individual educational trajectory. Not all HEIs have own software or
qualified specialists to let teaching staff and students make their own schedule. With some positive examples
(KIMEP, SDU and Satpayev university) the majority of universities lag behind with making schedules on paper
or in Excel. Another issue here is that students prefer to choose not qualified, but loyal teachers to have less
working load and better grades which guarantee keeping scholarships.
The last challenge which I would like to discuss today is impact of the pandemic on educational process.
Here we can identify several aspects. First is current situation of the infrastructure. Not all students, especially
in the remote areas, have access to the Internet which makes it difficult for them to use Zoom, Teams and other
platforms. It is not always possible for them to submit their papers before deadlines. Teachers can be affected by
this, too. Second is IT level competence of both teaching staff and students. Even though, programs like Zoom
or Teams don’t require high level of knowledge in programming, some teaching staff experienced difficulties
at the beginning of transition to online mode of education. Competences in presentation making and video-
recording and editing are another moment for discussion. Most of the teachers and students put too much text
on slides which makes it difficult for comprehension. And the last point is cheating. Kazakhstan as some other
post-Soviet countries has still not developed institute of the intellectual property. Downloading music, movies
and other materials from free online resources is still widely spread in the country. That is why it is no surprise
that students try to cheat during mid-terms and finals. What is the solution? If we convert finals from written
into oral form this will become time-consuming and teaching staff is not paid for extra time spent on the final
examinations.