Employment of international education graduates: Issues of economy and resistance to change


Jonbekova D. Kim T. Kerimkulova S. Ruby A. Sparks J.
October 2021John Wiley and Sons Inc

Higher Education Quarterly
2021#75Issue 4618 - 633 pp.

The use of international scholarship programmes is part of a long-standing approach to human capital development in many developing and middle-income countries that finance studies at universities abroad and locally. Yet, many scholarship alumni struggle to thrive in their home country and encounter numerous difficulties in their transition to the job market. This paper examines the employment experiences of Kazakhstans government scholarship alumni in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields and identifies the challenges they encounter navigating the labour market. Our analysis of 45 interviews demonstrated that although alumni hold a positional advantage in the job market and many succeed, there are also many alumni whose employability and career success are impeded by an intersection of socioeconomic and cultural factors, intergenerational clashes and scholarship programme regulations. The implications for scholarship programmes and government policy goals are discussed.

Central Asia , employability , international education , international scholarship programmes , Kazakhstan

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Graduate School of Education, Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan
Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Graduate School of Education
Graduate School of Education

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