KIMEP belongs to people
Dear Galina Konstantinovna!
I hope this letter will find You in good health and prosperity. I would like to thank you for your suggestion to reply to the letter concerning the KIMEP management received by your newspaper. This is a wonderful opportunity to make some amendments to this document of a public nature and to show the real situation at KIMEP.
I think it is very important to inform you that the KIMEP Board of Trustees as the supreme management organ formulates the policy of the university and bears the responsibility for general university management. No single serious decision is taken without the approval from the Board of Trustees. KIMEP strives to provide Kazakh citizens with best education and to help Kazakhstan with its development. Our motto is "Education to Change Society"and our mission is to serve people of Kazakhstan. We strive for bringing up a new generation of leaders in Kazakh economy, business and other spheres.
Question #1 Is it true that KIMEP churn rate is that high as it is said in the letter?
Around 600 professors and administrative employees work and over 4000 students study at KIMEP. The number of professors has increased by 9%, including Kazakh citizens who got professional education in the USA, Britain and other countries, in 2005-2006 academic year. The churn rate is sufficiently low, only 7% of our professors and administrative employees left KIMEP. It reflects the fact that for many people KIMEP is an attractive place for professional activity. Further proofs you can get from professors theirselves. According to the results of the survey on whether professors are satisfied with their work conducted in 2006, 95% of professors would have recommended KIMEP to their acquaintances as a place of employment. This is also confirmed by the students who demonstrate a high rate of satisfaction with the university. They satisfaction rate surveys are documents of public nature and can be found on our website www.kimep.kz.
Question #2 How can you explain dismissal of the international professors who taught in your university?
We have the established procedures for recruiting, promotion and dismissal of employees which we follow. Our system includes the consideration of every case by three committees of different level (college, department and university level), which consist of professors and administrators. Only four professors have been dismissed from KIMEP in last two years. We are extremely sorry about this but the activity of some professors did not correspond to the mission and goals of the university. Those who are dismissed by the own wish do it due to different reasons, including further increase in qualification (major factor for Kazakh professors), personal motives (family problems) and expiration of the term of staying in terms of such programs as Fulbright research scholarships and exchange programs with other universities. We make all possible efforts to keep our professors by providing high salary rate, competitiveness on the world market, provision of medical insurance and other benefits, including an opportunity to get free additional education. Besides it, we provide various scholarships for our students to get education. You have to remember that foreign professors working at KIMEP are apart from their homes and families. It is also necessary to understand that some of the specialists do not suit to work in such dynamically developing country as Kazakhstan.
Question #3 Are there any other income besides the tuition fees from the students?
As any other university, KIMEP receives the major part of its income in form of tuition fees. At this moment this part equals to 85-90% out of the university's total income. Nevertheless, KIMEP received 37.5 m tenge (about 300,000 thousand dollars) from corporate sponsors in form of direct donations in 2005-2006 academic year. I personally invested 302,338,728 tenge (2,050,697 dollars) into the university. Besides it, private sponsors donated over 12,5 millions tenge (about 1 million dollars) in form of a tuition fee payment for particular students. All income received By KIMEP is reinvested into the university's development in accordance with the requirements of its Charter in order to improve the quality of educational process that can be easily seen by anyone who decides to familiarize with significant improvement accomplished in the university over the last few years.
Question #4 Is it true that the USKO company, which belongs to your family, wins all the contracts for construction and repair works on the university campus?
It is absolutely wrong. The procedure of choosing subcontractors is open, transparent and based upon the competition principle. We will be happy to invite you and demonstrate our procedures and the corresponding documentation. Our of 11 construction and repair projects conducted these days or recently finished on the KIMEP campus, only two projects are conducted by the USKO company. The scrupulous procedure of the bid selection is established at KIMEP. If a project is connected to big investments, then the issue is considered by the KIMEP Council - the supreme management organ at the university level, which consists of professors, the university administration, employees and students. At the same time, the most significant investments are a subject to the obligatory approval of the KIMEP Board of Trustees, which consists of leading businessmen, scientists and representatives of the Kazakh government. In case of potential conflict of interests, corresponding conflicting sides are excluded from the process of consideration and approval of the project. I would like to note that these procedures recently were exposed to detailed consideration by the leading US agency on the universities accreditation which came to a conclusion that the established procedures correspond to the management standards adopted in the accredited universities.
Question #5 Why did the USKO particularly conducted the repair works in your university's library? Did anyone else applied to conduct these works?
The creation of world class library became one of the most successful achievements of KIMEP. Out of three received applications, the USKO Company was chosen as the most profitable for the university in terms of price and quality. This decision as the other decisions concerning large capital investments was made in according with the process mentioned above and corresponds to the full transparency principle. I am sure that the new KIMEP library is a cornerstone event achievement for the Kazakh education because it became the best library in the Republic and, in my opinion, on the CIS space.
Question #6 Are you sure that university's financial activity is transparent in accordance with the international standards?
I am, personally, sure that it is so. The KIMEP financial activities have been a subject to the external audits for the last five years by our own initiative. All the audits were made by the companies who got the international recognition - Price Waterhouse Coopers (four times) and Deloitte Touche (one time). The result of each audit was the undoubtedly positive opinion about KIMEP financial activity and its full transparency. The KIMEP system of financial control is also absolutely transparent and results pf this audits are the documents of public nature. KIMEP is the only educational institution in Kazakhstan which is regularly exposed to such audits. We will be happy to send you auditors' reports in the form, in which we announce it to the public.
Question #7 What is the professional level of the top managers and administrators in your university?
I am absolutely sure in the top management team of the university. The specialists which have the executive posts possess both decades of work experience at the administrative and academic posts and got the best education in the best universities of the world. This team helps to implement my vision of the KIMEP mission based on experience acquired in the USA, Canada, European countries and Kazakhstan. The university administrators were approved on their posts by the Board of Trustees in April this year. I am not sure that there is any such qualified team of the administrators as at KIMEP. I would to invite you any interested people to KIMEP and show them CVs of the top managers so you could get your own opinion. The Ministry of Education and Science and many Kazakh universities ask KIMEP administration to share their experience and special skills in developing higher educational system in Kazakhstan. This fact is a confirmation of the high qualification of the KIMEP administration.
Question #8 Is it true that KIMEP is not able to get accreditation from the US Accreditation group for already two years? If it is true, how can you explain it?
Usually, the procedure of acquiring accreditation of the US accreditation agency mentioned above takes from 5 to 7 years. Today KIMEP is in the middle of this process. We are proud of the fact that we are the first independent university in the CIS which applied to acquiring accreditation of the leading US accreditation agency known to the world community. I am sure that we will reach this goal and will able to provide people of Kazakhstan with world class education.
In conclusion I would like to underline that KIMEP is dynamically developing university which the Republic of Kazakhstan can be proud of. We have created and are improving KIMEP as a gift to people of Kazakhstan. On this way we follow principle of providing world level of education, with the help of which we hope to support those significant changes for the better that we can observe everyday in Kazakhstan.
We try to reach this through open and transparent management system in order for our students and graduates to contribute to the economic and social reforms and also in order of KIMEP to demonstrate by its actions academic and management skills of the world level. I am very grateful to our Board of Trustees for creation of the system that allows us to do so.
Our huge advantage is that our students and professors are actively involved in the management and decision-making process in the university. We try to accomplish everything that we declare. KIMEP is open for everyone, and we will be happy to invite everyone, who is interested, to visit our university and personally see our achievements. KIMEP belongs to people of Kazakhstan with which we glad to share our experience.
One more time I would like to invite you to visit KIMEP, talk to students, professors and administrator in order to make sure of that personally.
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