ABSTRACT

The complexities of neoliberal agendas in higher education, particularly those that have been partially “exported” to non-western societies through international development organizations, are particularly visible in the former Soviet Union. Here, the decline and collapse of “communism” in the late 1980s and early 1990s has been widely interpreted as evidence of the triumph of market economics over Soviet power. Further, in many former post-communist societies neoliberal education reform has become a central element of state and international projects to build new nation-states and hasten the region’s “transition to capitalism and democracy.”1 Many teachers, students and policy makers in the post-communist world-including some who are skeptical that this particular “transition” is desirable or even occurring-maintain faith in the power of formal higher education to enable both individual and social progress within a global capitalist system. Indeed, the rhetorical promises of a de-Sovietized, de-ideologicized and liberalized education constitute a new type of “education gospel,” which has intensifi ed these expectations (Creed and Wedel 1997; Grubb and Lazerson 2006: 295; Lauder et al. 2006: 35).2 This is certainly the case in many of the Central Asian republics, which upon independence exchanged one form of politico-economic dependency (on the Soviet imperial center) for another (international organizations, development bodies and foreign governments).3 Educational reform projects that promote individual liberty and autonomy, economic development, social harmony, and global citizenship (and which often grant monetary and professional awards) are understandably attractive to educators who struggle against the constraints of censorship, poverty, alienation, and social exclusion that were born of the Soviet collapse. Indeed, organizations such as the Open Society Institute, US Aid for International Development, Asian Development Bank and World Bank have been instrumental in fi nancing post-Soviet higher education and creating new professional

opportunities for academics (Amsler 2007; Bahry 2005; Berryman 2000; DeYoung 2001).