The recent years have brought much progress in the development of educational sphere in the Republic of Uzbekistan with the support of new government policy aiming at policy of integration into global society in all spheres. Higher education is responsible for training highly qualified specialists, who will be able to find work not only in Uzbekistan, but also in the international labour market. From this perspective, universities are responsible for giving actual knowledge and develop modern skills among their students. However, the universities need to be in line with global progress and here the departments responsible for international cooperation (IROs) should be modernized. The dominant role is played by the foreign partners, who may share their experience in the field of internationalization and give some clear recommendations to achieve the objectives in the sphere of successful cooperation with foreign partners.  

The main strategic goals of internationalization for the National University of Uzbekistan named after Mirzo Ulugbek are the following:

- Training highly qualified graduates who are in demand in the Uzbek and foreign labour markets and who are capable of addressing the issues of the modern globalized community, taking into account the world requirements;

- Recognition the university research and development in the international scientific community;

- Achieving the status of the reliable partner that is well-known in the world university space, and the status of the partner for implementing joint international short-term and long-term educational, cultural and scientific projects.

These goals are being realized with the participation of the NUUz in the project funded by Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education “UNICAC” (UNiversity Cooperation Framework for Knowledge Transfer in Central Asia and China), which consortium is composed of six countries: Spain, Italy, Finland (Program Countries), Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China (Partner Countries).

        

The specific objectives of the UNICAC are aimed at:

- benchmarking of potentials and development of national recommendations for international cooperation in the sphere of teaching, learning, and research;

- the enhancement of strategic, human, and infrastructural capacities for the management of IRO’s in all participating countries as a model for modernization and development of institutional frameworks for international cooperation;

- the development of cross-regional network as a platform for a regular dialogue on internationalization, knowledge transfer, and promotion of cooperation and exploitation of synergies between HEIs in Central Asia and China.

As a result of the extensive work within the frames of this project the IRO at the NUUz was restructured and 3 more departments were separated: Department of international ranking development, Department of educational programs, and International student department. Such reallocation of responsibilities gave its positive results:

- NUUz entered the UI GREENMETRIC WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS with 374 rank in 2019 and 353 in 2020;

- the amount of international students increased almost 3 times (25% of BD students, 40% of MD students and 100% of PhD students). It should also be emphasized that many students applied to the NUUz recently are from China;

- the publication activity of teaching and administrative staff of the NUUz increased 4 times (from 85 articles published in journals indexed in data base Scopus to 390);

- twelve double degree programs in cooperation with foreign universities were opened in NUUz from 2018-2020;

- four new MOC between the NUUz and foreign universities (Renmin university of China; Belorussia National Technological University; Russian Chemical-technological university; Ankara university) on double degree programs were signed in 2020-2021;

- international staff exchange (116 professors from foreign universities are lecturing at NUUz in 2021; 12 professors from the NUUz).

Taking into consideration the obtained results, it can be declared that the participation in international projects and active cooperation with international partners help HEIs improve their teaching/learning and research processes and in general positively supports universities in their integration into global educational and scientific society.