Transparency of NU Budget in Question

Marat Shibutov, Famous Kazakh political observer and long-time critic of the Nazarbayev University says we need to begin to inspect the untransparent budget of the university, which university’s President Shigeo Katsu has just stepped down.

Literal Translation:

Million KZT Salaries

I watch how an NU Department Chair Alima Bisenova confronts the idea of due diligence and transparency of the NU budgets.  She calls it “anti-Western inclination”. But in this country, by law, JSCs must be transparent, as well as any entities owned by state, not to mention state JSCs.

They say, that in the NU, a Department Chair makes USD 5 thousand a month, if that person is a Kazakh citizen. That is KZT 2,500,000. Some Faculty Members make up to KZT 4,833,000 a month or KZT 58,000,000 a year. That is salary only, not to take bonuses into consideration.

Of course, who would welcome an external auditor check that dolce vita? What if that auditor asks one question – you make ten times more, compared to a Professor in a regular Kazakh university, so may be your performance is 10 times better? Or what if that auditor asks to show the NU rating? Or what if that auditor learns that

80% of the NU graduates immigrate, which means moneys wasted in vein 

They Are Cutting Budgets, But There Are Nuances

This feast in the times of plague is coming to its end – government is cutting the NU budgets. I did take in account moneys coming from Samruk-Kazyna but the mainstream tendency is obvious. With this reality, they might start publishing their reports and disclosing info about their finance in a couple of years. 

Table Below Shows NU Financing (Year, Budget in KZT Million, Budget in USD Million)

Trickster Government

Our Government is a cunning entity – they think that if they document their contribution into NU budgets as appropriations by Samruk-Kazyna, we will know nothing. But

I dig deeper and I find what I am looking for – in 2019, NU received KZT 6 billion 872 million, and 2020 – KZT 3 billion 973 million.

Table Below shows transfers to the NU going under the title “Other Liabilities” underlined in red

NU, the Real Estate Records Breaker

To crown the above, Mr. Shibutov excavated information about real estate owned by the NU and compared it to the real estate owned by other Kazakh Universities:

“How many real estate do our universities own? The Committee on State Property and Privatization reports the following figures:

Al-Farabi State University – 98
Gumilev Eurasian National University — 78
Satpayev Kazakh National Technical University – 67
Kazakh Women’s Pedagogical Institute – 43
Buketov Karaganda University – 67
Nazarbayev University – 401 (more than 600 in the past)

“Judging by shrunk number of real estate assets owned by the NU, our Ministry of Education and Science should watch carefully, otherwise those mansions will disappear. Besides, all those assets are located n very juicy places”

Table below shows real estate assets owned by NU