Azerbaijan allocates fund for higher education institutions, minister says

"Azerbaijan's higher education institutions are new. There were higher education institutions that focused more on personnel training. During the reform process, it is good to see the change of the name of some higher education institutions from institute to university or academy, and now they are becoming universities. An important issue that determines the rating and reputation of any higher education institution is the quality of the scientific research that takes place there."

Azernews reports that Minister of Science and Education Emin Amrullayev said this at the opening ceremony of the VI International Scientific Conference of Researchers in the Field of Economics and Management held on May 23.

The minister noted that in the last 10 years, qualitative changes in the research works of a number of higher education institutions have been observed in a continuously increasing direction: "This is a typical dynamic for Azerbaijan's higher education. The current funding model is one of the biggest problems facing universities.

Capitation funding is a model that only focuses on student costs. There is no research component here. Funding research with tuition is difficult. Today, higher education institutions are able to finance research mainly by saving tuition fees. Targeted research funding instruments are currently non-existent.

Last year, for the first time, we implemented a pilot financing tool based on the indicators of universities. This is the first step. 8 million manats have been allocated to higher education institutions under the Ministry of Science and Education.

We need to revisit the funding formula to do more research. At the moment, there is a lot of work going on in this regard."