Azerbaijan

Types of—Public & Private: In the mid-1990s about 17 percent of the age group appropriate for tertiary studies was enrolled in higher-education programming in Azerbaijan. Since 1993 Azerbaijan has been reshaping its college and university level training programs to match European multi-stage standards for Bachelor's and Master's level courses. By the late 1990s, higher education in Azerbaijan was provided through a network of 48 educational institutions (30 government-supported and 18 privately funded) that encompassed a total of twenty universities, 8 academies, and 20 other types of educational institutions (institutes, higher colleges, higher seminary, and higher-education institutions for professional improvement and retraining). Through this network of 48 institutions, training was provided in more than 90 fields (related to 390 professions) at the Bachelor's level and in 80 fields (related to 580 professions) at the Master's level. Over 110,000 students were enrolled in highereducation institutions in Azerbaijan, taught by about 15,000 professors and teachers (about 1,000 of them professors and over 8,000 assistant professors and senior lecturers). Over 15,000 additional staff members were employed as managers, logisticians, teaching assistants, service staff, and the like in institutions of higher education.

Admission Procedures: Admission to university-level training in Azerbaijan is through competitive examinations taken at the end of secondary education. More than 20,000 students—about 20 to 25 percent of secondary school graduates—were being admitted annually to higher-education institutions by the end of the 1990s. Professors or teachers of higher education were each responsible for 5.2 students at that time, when attendance at higher-education institutions cost about US$100 per student for the academic year.

Administration: Responsibility for higher education in Azerbaijan falls principally to the Ministry of Education, composed of a carefully structured array of departments, divisions, and offices. Higher education in the sciences and at the doctoral level is the responsibility of an entirely separate department in the Ministry of Education, the Science Department, which supervises training and research, including pedagogical training and research, and provides leadership and planning for doctoral programs and post-graduate training and credentialing in the sciences and the arts.