Long viewed as an educational backwater, Turkmenistan is advancing ambitious plans to modernize and integrate its higher education system into the global mainstream.
Higher education reforms are being calibrated to help guide the opening and diversification of the Turkmen economy, Azat Atayev, the country’s vice minister of education, said in an interview.
“Traditionally, an education system asks: how many teachers, engineers or economists do we need today?” Atayev said. “We are trying to ask a different question: what skills, professions and economic activities will Turkmenistan need 10 or 15 years from now?”
Turkmen president Serdar Berdymukhamedov in late 2025 approved a 25-year Professional Education Development Strategy, along with an implementation plan covering 2026–2030. Education officials are also working with the UNDP to finalize a National System for Strategic Planning of Human Capital for 2026–2027. The system aims to use AI, analytical modeling, and workforce forecasting to pinpoint skills gaps that need to be closed.
Atayev said an electronic monitoring system is being introduced to collect information on attendance, grades, test results, and teacher workload. The data can be used by teachers and administrators to identify trends and, where needed, make evidence-based “pedagogical correction[s].”
“We are developing independent diagnostics that allow us to compare teacher-assigned grades with external measures of learning progress,” Atayev added.
On September 1, the first Pearson Certiport Authorized Testing Center began operating in Turkmenistan, enabling citizens to obtain internationally recognized IT certifications from such companies as Microsoft, Apple, Intuit and Cisco.
“Certifications validate specific professional skills, enhance the competitiveness of graduates, and create additional opportunities for them to participate in international projects and enter the global labor market,” stated a commentary published by the official TDH state news agency.
Achieving the desired outcomes promises to be a tall order. Outside experts have identified numerous shortcomings across the country’s entire education system, from primary school through the university level. Among the more serious issues is a shortage of qualified teachers. And while Turkmenistan registers strong student completion rates for primary and secondary schooling, Turkmen students tend to underperform in such areas as critical thinking, reading, and math.
“Children learn by staying in school, but by Grade 8, 88 per cent have reading skills and 85 percent have the numeracy skills they should have acquired by Grade 3,” according to a UNICEF Turkmenistan education fact sheet published in 2021.
“Serious regional disparities in foundational learning skills exist in Turkmenistan,” the UNICEF report added.
Until recently, the higher education system was highly politicized, with the curricula largely designed to buttress state authority. Throughout the early 2000s, aspiring students seeking admission to universities were required to pass an exam on the writings contained in the “Ruhnama,” a quasi-philosophical work attributed to Turkmenistan’s first ruler, Saparmurat Niyazov.
The Ruhnama admissions test was dropped in 2014, but researchers noted that university students were subsequently required to study works written by the country’s second president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.
In 2021, the Turkmen government launched efforts to overhaul educational standards in just about every field so that they can meet international norms. That same year, officials began tracking the performance of universities and individual faculty, relying on over 80 indicators, including publications, citations and h-index dynamics that measure the impact of research over time. According to Atayev, publications by Turkmen experts and academics indexed in Scopus and Web of Science, citation databases that are independently curated, increased 40-fold from 2020-2025. He did not provide specific numbers.
In 2023, the country acceded to the Lisbon Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education, as well as signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States aimed at “strengthening bilateral cooperation and expanding educational exchange and English language programs.”
Atayev did not offer specifics about the state’s education budget, merely indicating that the government was making available the resources needed to implement its reform vision. “Dynamic education requires dynamic budgeting,” he said.
Turkmenistan’s commitment to reforms is seen through its increasing transparency surrounding the education sector, Atayev maintained. He pointed out that 13 Turkmen higher education institutions gained “reporter” status in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2026. In addition, 14 of the country’s 27 higher education institutions were ranked in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2025, which measures universities’ efforts to fulfill UN sustainable development goals. Only three universities were included in the 2026 impact rankings. But Atayev emphasized that 2025-26 marked the first years that Turkmen institutions submitted data to be considered for the Times’ rankings.
“Five or six years ago, this level of international visibility simply did not exist,” Atayev said, referring to the rankings. “The important point is the trajectory.”
Some foreign education-oriented advocacy groups are cautiously optimistic about Turkmenistan’s current course.
“The nation has a long history of authoritarian regimes and policies to combat, but the turn to modernization, which centers on education, offers hope that higher education in Turkmenistan will continue to develop and the nation’s citizens will continue making more connections with the global world,” stated an analysis published in August by the Borgen Project. “These changes will bolster the economy and help more Turkmen to live on reasonable wages.”