Kazakhstan wants German technical universities to open their branches in the country

While meeting with the delegation from Germany, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said that Kazakhstan is strongly interested in the experience Germany has accumulated in the sphere of professional training for engineers.

Kazakhstan is exploring opportunities to open representative offices of German technical institutes, laboratories, scientific and research centers and competence centers in order to increase the level of professional qualification of Kazakhstani specialists.

«Germany is one of Kazakhstan’s key partners in the European Union. We have more than 600 businesses established here in Kazakhstan with the help of the German capital. The potential for growth in trade and investments is significant,» Tokayev said.

The number of students has been growing for the past few years in Kazakhstan. For example, over the past five years, the number of students increased by 25% and reached 576,000 due to the population increase in general and the tendency of youth to move to big cities where the vast majority of universities are located.

Given that Kazakhstan is trying to prepare its new generation of technical workers, the country is eager to cooperate with foreign countries where technical education is widely considered strong. President Tokayev, for example, has already announced the idea of opening branches of leading Russian technical universities in Kazakhstan.

In February, Ashat Aimagambetov, the minister of education in Kazakhstan and his Russian counterpart Valery Falkov signed a framework agreement on the opening of branches of Russian universities in the country. So far, there are nine universities on the list of Russian entities that are going to open their branches in Kazakhstan. Among them are the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute) (planning to open a branch in Almaty), Gubkin National University of Oil and Gas (branch in Atyrau), Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Bauman Moscow State Technical University and other five unidentified universities.