DUSHANBE, November 8, 2008, Asia-Plus  -- An official presentation of a concept of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) common network university was held at the Ministry of Education (MoE) on November 5.

Speaking in an interview with Asia-Plus, the first Deputy Education Minister, Farhod Rahimov, said that the legal foundation of the SCO common network university would be developed in the first half-year of 2009 and the university itself would be opened in 2010.       

According to him, 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 nations on annual basis,” the deputy minister said, noting that Tajikistan would probably have a quota of more than 40 students.

The university is created to prepare the specialists for the economies of the SCO states and the university will train specialists in energy, material science, metallurgy and mechanical engineering, construction, transport, history, linguistics, information and communications technologies, Rahimov said.  

Ms. Larisa Yefremova, the deputy head of the international relations directorate within the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, presented the concept.  

            We will recall that the SCO education ministers reached an agreement on the foundation of the common network university at their meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan on October 23, 2008.  The ministers agreed to found a common network university on the base of the leading higher educational institutions of the SCO member states.  Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Russian Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko noted that the main languages of instruction at the universities would be Russian and Chinese, as well as the state language of the country in which the university is located.  According to him, the students who graduate from the SCO University will be given an opportunity to continue their education in foreign universities starting from any semester.  "Students will have to spend at least 30% of their study time in the universities of the partner-countries," he added.

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.  By 2012 it is planned to launch the Bachelor''s and Master''s programs, thereby completing the establishment of the full-scale university, the Russian minister said.