Relationship between determinants of higher education and economic development: The case of Kazakhstan

2023

Full text Open access: Gold Metadata (CSL-JSON)
DOI 10.21511/ppm.21(1).2023.29
Data confidence 70 medium
How this score is calculated

It is built from checkable properties of the record itself: whether the article has a DOI, how many independent sources confirmed its data, whether the required fields are filled in, and how recent the latest confirmation is. Disagreement between sources and a missing identifier lower it. A value of 80 or above means the record was published without further checking; 60 to 79 means it is published at reduced confidence, with a manual check advisable. A record verified by an editor by hand is never pushed below 90 by a recalculation. This scores our data about the article, not the article itself.

Abstract

This study aims to examine the relationship between higher education and economic development determinants in Kazakhstan’s regions. The paper used two sets of indicators of three-time series: 2010, 2015, and 2020. The analysis constructed a correlation using a panel dataset for 15 regions of Kazakhstan compiled by the Statistics Bureau of Kazakhstan and the National Bank. The first set reflects the determinants of higher education (number of students in colleges and universities, number of teaching staff, and the existing ICT infrastructure in universities). The second set includes indicators of regional economic development (GRP per capita and the population’s income level). The results showed a causal relationship between economic development and the determinants of higher education in the regions of Kazakhstan, which depend on the period. Surprisingly, the number of university students has almost no effect on GRP per capita and the population’s income level. For 2015–2020, the study observed the emergence and strengthening of correlations between economic growth and the development of innovations in universities. The findings also identified Mangystau, Atyrau, North Kazakhstan, and Pavlodar as regions with low innovation development in education. Therefore, the country’s higher education development policy should encourage and strengthen knowledge management systems in these regions. The study concludes that higher education and economic indicators significantly influence the growth of the economy in Kazakhstan. AcknowledgmentThe study was carried out within the framework of program-targeted IRN BR18574240 funding by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan “Development Strategy of Kazakhstan Regional Potential: Assessment of Socio-Cultural and Economic Potentials, Roadmap, Models and Scenarios Planning”.