Kazakhstan spends millions of dollars every year sending its brightest students to the world’s best universities through two flagship programs: the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) and Bolashak. For NIS, the state invests millions with no public record of what becomes of its graduates once they enter foreign educational institutions. For Bolashak, the return figures look reassuring on paper, but only until one asks what happens the moment the obligation expires.
For Kazakhstan’s economy, heavily reliant on oil and gas exports, human capital is what can bring the country to its goal of economic diversification through the ideas and skills that no natural resource can replicate. Students from Kazakhstan studying abroad, with access to the world’s best professors and cutting-edge technologies, are exactly the human capital the country cannot afford to lose. However, they are also the ones the government has been paying to send away without a sustainable retention strategy in place.
Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools
Founded in 2008, the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools network offers an internationally recognized 12-year curriculum, directly compatible with many foreign university admissions systems. It also provides some of its students with grants covering the full cost of attendance. The state funds NIS generously: in 2023 alone, more than $37 million was invested into the network. The results are extraordinary: from 2010 to 2024, 654 students received offers from the top 100 universities in the world, with 32 of them from the Ivy League. However, which country these graduates end up in is a different question, and the available statistics offer no public answer to.
One former NIS student, who received a full scholarship to study abroad, says, “I’m extremely grateful for all the resources that the NIS provided me with. However, after my graduation from the university, I will be moving to San Francisco to work as an AI engineer. It would take me at least seven years to make the same salary I’ll be earning here in a year.”
Another says, “It is not only about the higher wages in the U.S. It’s about the opportunities and autonomy one gets. The research lab I’ve joined since graduation has far more funding and resources for the work I’m actually passionate about.”
Bolashak Program
Unlike NIS, the Bolashak program, established in 1993 and widely regarded as one of the most generous scholarship programs in the world, does require its recipients to return. Graduates must work in Kazakhstan for up to four years or face financial penalties. On paper, this looks like a solution to the human capital problem. In practice, it is only a delay. While the state at least partially recovers its investment, it is developed markets that eventually inherit the talent.
“After completing my requirement back home, I was able to get an American company to sponsor my visa,” says one Bolashak recipient. “I moved to the U.S. shortly after.”
“I was offered a transfer to the European branch of my company,” says another, one year after fulfilling their obligation.
The Solution to the Brain Drain
Kazakhstan’s investment in NIS and Bolashak was never intended to benefit the research labs of MIT, Google’s engineering department, or European process manufacturing. Yet the accounts of graduates suggest this is precisely what is happening. While comprehensive data on retention rates remains unavailable, the pattern emerging from interviews with former NIS students and Bolashak recipients is consistent enough to warrant attention. The existence of financial penalties in Bolashak itself signals that voluntary return was never guaranteed as the government designed enforcement mechanisms precisely because it anticipated the problem. The issue is not the graduates themselves as every person will naturally pursue the best opportunities available to them. The question is why Kazakhstan has invested so heavily in sending talent abroad without an equally serious strategy for bringing it back. Addressing this requires action on multiple fronts:
To begin with, Kazakhstan should introduce targeted return incentives for recipients of state-funded scholarships. This could include additional compensation packages and relocation support. This model exists in other Asian markets, such as South Korea, which offers returnees financial incentives under the Brain Pool program. Kazakhstan could develop its own version, built for the sectors it most urgently needs, such as technology, AI, and engineering.
Moreover, government support for the private sector could unlock what policy alone cannot. Tax breaks, co-investment schemes, and streamlined business registration for technology companies in priority sectors would give returning graduates an option beyond taking a government job: starting their own tech company in Kazakhstan.
Finally, the prestige and quality of local universities must improve. State-led efforts to open campuses of foreign universities in Kazakhstan are a step in the right direction, but they are not sufficient. Kazakhstani universities themselves need investment, particularly in research. A scientist who can access world-class research opportunities at home has more reasons to return.
Lessons for Central Asia
Kazakhstan is not alone in facing this challenge. Across Central Asia, governments, including Uzbekistan’s, are investing in the education of their young people with the hope that knowledge brought home from abroad will strengthen their economies. Kazakhstan, as the region’s largest economy, serves as a reminder for other Central Asian states that are following the same path. Sending students abroad is the easy part; however, building opportunities worth coming back for is harder, and, unfortunately, it is the question no scholarship program can answer on its own.
The brain drain paradox is not inevitable, and it will most certainly not resolve itself. The countries that recognize this early enough to act will be the ones that actually diversify their economies. The ones that do not will continue growing talent for the rest of the world at their own expense.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the publication, its affiliates, or any other organizations mentioned.
