National Erasmus+ Office in Uzbekistan

ended

The 2019 EU Strategy for Central Asia emphasizes ‘investment in youth, education, innovation, and culture’. The last 4 years in Uzbekistan became a period of sweeping reforms and important decisions aimed at improving quality of higher education that resulted in multi-fold increase of the relevance thereof as well as the important role played by intensively developing international cooperation in line with the Concept of Higher Education Development in Uzbekistan by 2030. The main strategic objectives of UZ NEO: •to focus on increased number of HEIs-newcomers (from 77 in 2017 to 152 in 2021) and new areas, assist the potential applicants and provide relevant information on completed/on-going projects in similar areas; •to support on-going projects to raise the local ownership, strengthening cooperation with non-academic partners project stakeholders and promoting best practice of efficient project management; •enhance the overall E+ visibility, dissemination of project results and overall information activities, maximizing use of the modern tools and technologies and regular communication with programme stakeholders; •closely follow HE policy developments due to on-going rapid changes in Uzbekistan and in particular supporting the activities of HEREs. NEO will be focused on support to development of competitive Jean Monnet proposals by Uzbek HEIs. Digitalisation, internationalisation, introduction of ECTS and development of innovation/research capacities of HEIs, enhancing employability of graduates and university-enterprise cooperation would be the most relevant areas for Erasmus+ in Uzbekistan. Ensuring the quality of outputs and tailoring to the needs of target groups the updated UZ NEO Promotion&Dissemination Strategy and Quality Assurance Plan will be applied for organisation of more than 25 events per year: Infoday, 2 Cluster meetings and 12 information and project development/management seminars, 2 TAMs, Annual ICM and 2 HEREs events, 2 Erasmus+ Weeks.