Academic job in Kazakhstan: take it or leave it?
April 3, 2013 12:01 PM Subscribe
I was offered an academic job at Nazarbayev University, a new English-medium
university in Astana, Kazakhstan. I am in a STEM field. Help me decide
whether I should accept it.
The contract is for three years, extendable, but there is no tenure in
Kazakhstan.
Salary and benefits: $75k a year + performance bonus, free on-campus housing
, full health benefits, two paid flights home a year, relocation. This is
significantly more than I would be making in the US, especially considering
the free housing and 10% flat income tax rate.
Research funding: $25k start-up funds + $50k targeted funding for equipment
(ok in my field). Then there are 3 rounds of grant applications a year.
Proposals are sent to the US for review and awards are contingent on
recommendation by their partner universities (see below). Recent grant
amounts are in the range $500k-1m (comparable to US). The success rate is
not published, but the competition is likely smaller than in the US. Some
travel funds are also available.
Teaching load: 2+2 (subjects I would actually enjoy teaching, all at junior
and senior level). The student body seems exceptional: the acceptance rate
is 10%, the average high school GPA is 4.8/5.0. All accepted students
receive a full scholarship (covers tuition costs and living expenses).
The university: founded in 2010. Its official mission is to be the first
Western-style university in Kazakhstan. The university is not subordinate to
the Department of Education, but governed by a special act of parliament
that gives it a degree of autonomy unprecedented in former Soviet republics.
All instruction is in English, 75% of the faculty obtained their doctorates
in the US, and about 40% are American-born (the rest come mostly from
Europe, Russia, Japan, and Kazakhstan). Even much of the staff are Americans
formerly the World Bank VP for Europe and Central Asia. The provost is Anne
Lonsdale, formerly the pro-vice-chancellor for external relations and
president of New Hall, Cambridge, and an experienced international education
administrator. The chairman of the board of trustees is Kazakhstan
president Nursultan Nazarbayev, for whom this is a pet project. The
university has partnership agreements with UCL (School of Engineering
strategic partner), Carnegie-Mellon (School of Science and Technology
strategic partner), U Wisconsin-Madison, U Penn, U Pittsburgh, Duke,
Cambridge, NUS, LBNL, Argonne National Lab. Partners are involved in
curriculum development, funding decisions, faculty recruitment, quality
control, exchange programs for students and faculty.
这待遇很爽了吧，何况哈萨克斯坦的消费水平...
