Beware of Big Ideas

Newly nervous post-Soviet states crack down on Western schools.
By Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova | NEWSWEEK

A generation ago, as communism was collapsing and the leaders of the former Soviet empire were scrambling to create prosperous nations from the ruins, most agreed that bringing in Western-style universities was the key to improving local business and tech culture. Whether it was a government of former dissidents in Budapest or old Soviet strongmen like Nursultan Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan, many leaders began welcoming in foreign professors and U.S. academic practices.

A slew of American- and international-style universities sprang up across the region—some, like the Central European University in Budapest, funded by individuals such as the financier George Soros; others, like Kyrgyzstan's American University of Central Asia, partly funded by the U.S. State Department. Several, like the short-lived American University of Baku, Azerbaijan, immediately foundered in suspicion, but surprisingly, most flourished. By 2008, the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research (known as KIMEP), for example, boasted 110 foreign professors teaching everything from business administration to international journalism. Another Nazarbayev-supported school, the Kazakh-American Free University, managed last year to place all of its graduates in ministries or top multinationals.