Kimep

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Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research КИМЭП/Казахстанский институт менеджмента, экономики и прогнозирования Kazakhstanskiy institut menedzhmenta, ekonomiki i prognozirovaniya


Motto:	"Education to Change Society"
Established:	1992
Type:	Private, nonprofit
President:	Chan Young Bang
Students:	4,370 (undergraduate) 490 (graduate)
Location:	Almaty, Kazakhstan
Website:	http://www.kimep.kz/

KIMEP (a Russian language acronym for Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research) is an institution of higher education in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

KIMEP is a private, nonprofit university offering credit-based, North American-style degree curricula and using English as the language of instruction. It was founded in 1992 at the behest of the President of newly-independent Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Initially offering graduate degrees only, it enrolled its first undergraduate students in 1999. It currently enrolls more than 4,000 students and has a faculty of over 200 from more than 25 countries.

Academic building of KIMEP

KIMEP's mission is to develop well-educated students and to improve the quality of life in Kazakhstan and the Central Asian region through teaching, learning, the advancement of knowledge in the fields of business administration and social science, and through community service.

KIMEP offers undergraduate degrees in Business Administration (majors in Accounting, Finance, Management and Marketing, and Operations Management and Information Systems) and Social Sciences (majors in Economics, Political Science, Public Administration, and Journalism). Graduate degrees offered include the MBA, MPA, MA in Economics, Master of International Relations, and MA in International Journalism and Mass Communication. The Doctor of Business Administration was introduced in 2006 -- the first program of its type in the region. An Executive MBA program and an MA degree in TESOL opened in 2007, and an LLM program in International Law is awaiting licensure by the Kazakhstani Ministry of Education.

KIMEP's campus in south central Almaty occupies the premises of the former Central Training School of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. Rapid enrollment growth in recent years has required construction of new buildings. The new Library opened in 2006 and a new classroom building was dedicated on 28 March 2008. The following week, on 2 April 2008, President Nazarbayev visited the KIMEP campus, toured the newest buildings, and met with students.

[edit] Controversies

The KIMEP Student Government elected in February 2007 raised objection to the Institute's plan to raise tuition for the academic year 2007-08 by 20%. Its efforts to reverse the planned increase culminated in a demonstration (not, as sometimes misreported, a "strike") on 30 March 2007. This was perhaps unprecedented among universities in the region. While believing that the tuition increase is justifiable, KIMEP's administration firmly supported students' right to peacefully express their opinions by whatever means they wished, including protests of this sort. Ultimately the tuition increase was moderated, and both students and administration agreed to direct renewed efforts towards developing other sources of revenue for KIMEP.

In Fall 2006 KIMEP was under fire from some former administrators, faculty and students. The former administrators and faculty charged that KIMEP is mismanaged and that it systematically defrauds foreign faculty. KIMEP administration strongly denied these charges, believing that their continued promulgation in cyberspace was the work of a small number of disgruntled former employees whose views are unrepresentative of KIMEP faculty and staff. The Web site has not been updated for several months:

Unofficial blog from former faculty

In April 2008 a faculty member, unhappy with a decision (eventually reversed) to withhold pay for a period of unauthorized absence before the spring break, established a Web site in the name of a non-existent "Faculty Association of Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research" on which he posted commentaries and documents critical of KIMEP management and in particular the Institute's discipline procedures. KIMEP supports the creation of an appropriately representative faculty association and has no intention of interfering with the freedom of expression enjoyed by its faculty. However, KIMEP stresses that the unofficial "Faculty Association" web site has no connection with KIMEP.