DUSHANBE, October 9, 2012, Asia-Plus — The fourth meeting of the ministers of education from member nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has kicked off in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan today.
Minister of Education Nouriddin Saidov, First Deputy Minister of Education Farhod Rahimov and Tajik Technical University Chancellor Anvar Abdurasoulov are representing Tajikistan at this event.
An official source at the Ministry of Education (MoE) of Tajikistan says the SCO education ministers’ meeting itself will take place on October 11 while a meeting of the council of chancellors of leading higher educational institutions of the SCO member nations and the SCO expert working group is being held in the Kyrgyz capital today.
The meeting is expected to review the results of the past ten-year cooperation between the SCO member nations in the field of education and consider priorities of further expansion of educational cooperation as well as the progress of implementation of the concept of the SCO common network university, the source said.
We will recall that the SCO education ministers reached an agreement on the decision to found a common network university on the base of the leading higher educational institutions of these countries in 2009.
According to Russian media sources, the proposed university will not be located in any particular one place, but it will function as a network of the already existing universities in the SCO member nations.
The SCO common network university is expected to target the four areas (courses): regional studies; ecology; IT-technology; and energy. The main languages of instruction at the universities will be Russian and Chinese, as well as the state language of the country in which the university is located.
Student enrollment will be based on mutually agreed quotas along the line of the SCO university. The quotas will generally correspond to the proportion contributed by a particular SCO member-state to the budget of the university and will be determined by the member-countries on annual basis.
The graduates will be awarded the diplomas of the university in which they started their education or completed at least 60% of the study time, and a certificate of the SCO University. It is envisaged that in the future the graduates would be awarded a special diploma of the University of the SCO.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization or SCO is an intergovernmental mutual-security organization which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Except for Uzbekistan, the other countries had been members of the Shanghai Five, founded in 1996; after the inclusion of Uzbekistan in 2001, the members renamed the organization.
