Kazakhstan’s anti-corruption strategies are showing early signs of progress, a top official at the country’s Agency for Civil Service Affairs and Fighting Corruption said. Among the cited projects was Sanaly Urpak (Conscious Generation), established in Almaty, which seeks to minimise corruption in the education system. The project has developed an optimal solution for curbing corruption at the secondary and higher education level, as well as disseminating the academic honesty principle. University academic integrity and cohesion ratings will be issued annually based on project estimates.

Two years ago, a Polish economist leading a private university in Warsaw, was contacted by headhunters from Moscow. They had spotted his profile on LinkedIn and wanted a Russian-speaking European university leader to reform the prominent Narxoz University in Almaty, a city in the far east of vast Kazakhstan, a few hours’ drive from the borders of north-western China. Sixteen months into his job as rector, he told Times Higher Education about his efforts to root out cheating, plagiarism, corruption and staid teaching, which have led to the firing of hundreds of academics.

Corruption is today a big problem in Kazakhstan's higher education sector. Lecturers often collude, i.e. if one teacher pass a student as a favour for one colleague, then he/she can count on assistance from the colleague if he/she needs to pass one of his/her students. In exams, some lecturers ask very difficult, even nonsensical questions making the tests impossible to pass without coming to an "arrangement". Also falsification of records happens after request from heads of departments, deans of faculties etc.