TASHKENT (Uzbekistan): Private Singapore school the Management Development Institute of Singapore (MDIS) has opened its first overseas campus in Tashkent and is looking to expand further both locally and abroad.
It is planning to open four more campuses in China, India, Malaysia and Vietnam so that its students can have a truly global education, spending a term on each campus.
In Singapore, it has reached its full capacity of 12,000 at the main Queenstown campus and will move nine of its classes to a temporary site nearby in January. It is also searching for another campus in town, as the lease for the one in Dhoby Ghaut will be ending soon.
Wednesday's opening marked the first foray into the Central Asia region - which includes countries like Kazakhstan and Afghanistan - by a Singapore education provider.
The $20 million joint venture was set up by MDIS and the Uzbekistan Banking Association.
The 52-year-old school was invited by the Uzbek government to set up a campus there last year to offer more undergraduate opportunities to its youth.
The country, with a population of 28 million, has university places for only 10 to 20per cent of its annual secondary school graduating cohort of 650,000 students.
The former Soviet Republic, which gained independence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, also has a very young and literate population. Some 60per cent of its people are under the age of 30 and its literacy rate of 98per cent is among the highest in the region.
There are 62 local universities in the country, most of which offer courses in the Uzbek languages; four Russian universities, and one other foreign university set up by Britain's Westminster University.
Uzbekistan's First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Dr Rustum Azimov, was the guest of honour at the campus opening on Wednesday. He said it was a significant development for the country's education landscape as it would help to train managers for industries such as banking and finance.
'MDIS is an important institution for developing our higher education system. Uzbekistan is in a transitional period and we need well-educated and modern managers to lead our business entities.'
MDIS has been granted university status. Offering only degree programmes to begin with, it plans to offer MBA programmes in the future.
Course fees are US$4,200 (S$6,300) a year - more expensive than the average US$1,200 charged by local universities, but students are undeterred. More than 1,000 applied for the 275 places on offer.
Classes in three degree programmes - banking and finance, entrepreneurship and management, and business and marketing - started last month. The courses are offered jointly with its partner, the University of Wales.
MDIS Tashkent will offer another nine programmes by next March.
Its month-old city centre has purpose-built classrooms and lecture theatres, laboratories and a hospitality training centre. The 4ha campus also has a 160-bed hostel and sports facilities, including an indoor swimming pool.
MDIS plans to attract over 2,000 students in the next three years and 5,000 students in five years.
Umarova Dilroza, 23, who is doing a degree in business and marketing, said she first heard of MDIS two years ago when her father travelled to Singapore for business and had been hoping a campus would be set up in her country.
'I hope to work in the tourism industry and studying at MDIS will give me the advantage of studying in English.'
Abdullayer Husan, 18, who is enrolled in the banking and finance course, would like to see exchange programmes introduced so that he can study at the MDIS campus in Singapore.
Having lived in landlocked Uzbekistan all his life, he said: 'I've never seen the ocean. I want to learn more about the world and see Singapore. It's small, but famous for its education.'
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