Inter-Sectoral Dynamics

Table 5.1 below reveals a remarkable fluctuation in student enrollments at both sectors in HE. Following an explosive growth in the beginning of the 1990s, private enrollments continued to expand further until 1996/97 when the sector enrolled the highest number of students. Measured in the share of all student enrollments, the growth of the private sector had reached its peak during the academic year of 1995/96, when the sector accommodated 33.8 percent of students enrolled in all HE institutions. However, from that point there has been a striking reduction in the private sector enrollment share. It is important to add that since 1996/97 the size of the sector has been decreasing in absolute terms as well.

Table 5.1: Numerical Overview of the Public and Private Higher Education Sectors in Georgia, 1990-2006

Year N of Private Institutions

Total Private

Enrollments Private enrollm as

% of the total HE enrolm.

N of public institut

Total Public Institution Enrollments

Self-financed students as % of the total public enrollm.

1990/91 19 103 893 ---

1991/92 48 10633 9.4 19 102 818 --- 1992/93 131 33063 26.7 18 90 909 --- 1993/94 Na Na 23 91 110 7.8 1994/95 93 41348 30.4 23 94 642 10.7 1995/96 109 42006 33.8 23 82 230 12.8 1996/97 122 42889 33.1 21 86 506 18.1 1997/98 159 40162 31.5 23 87 258 26.1 1998/99 154 38272 29.8 24 90 054 34.3 1999/00 162 40126 29.7 24 95 013 35.9 2000/01 146 33138 23.8 26 105 822 38.1 2001/02 153 31887 21.6 26 115 546 43.3 2002/03 154 31465 20.5 26 122 223 43.1 2003/04 150 29338 19.2 26 123 866 43.6 2004/05 172 35440 20.5 26 137 021 46.3 2005/06 146 30512 21.1 25 113 801 47.9 Source: Calculated from the State Department of Statistics Data

Note: by the 1^st of October 1997, the number of registered private higher education institutions was 267, but only 60% of these were covered by statistical observation. Data for the academic year of 1993/94 are unavailable.

Equally prominent are the changes that have been taking place in the public HE sector since the collapse of communism. Before the events of 1989, the HE cohort enrollment level in Georgia constituted around 19 percent, fairly high according to the Soviet standards (UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre 2001) (Appendix 1).

During years immediately following the Soviet rule the number of public enrollments actually dropped. As can be calculated from Table 5.1 above, by 1997/98, the number had fallen by some 20 percent compared to 1990/91. It is only from 1997/98 that we observe the public participation rise, clearly owing to the growing body of self-financed students. As for the number of public institutions, the state-provided HE in pre-transition Georgia was composed of 19 institutions offering training in more than

400 disciplines. The number of public institutions has been growing since then so that by 2004/05 the public sector was comprised of 26 universities along with their 18 branch institutions, which makes 44 campuses altogether.⁵⁰

Owing to the constant flux in both sector enrollments, significant fluctuation is observed also in the total student numbers and in the rate of HE participation, which expanded by some 10 percent over a decade. Table 5.2 below illustrates this:

Table 5.2: Participation in Higher Education in Georgia, 1989-2000

Year Total Student Enrollm

% of 19-24 age population 1989/90 n/a 19.1 1990/91 103 893 21.7 1991/92 113 451 23.8 1992/93 123 972 26.2 1993/94 91 110 ^a 19.4 1994/95 135 990 28.6 1995/96 124 236 26.1 1996/97 129 395 27.0 1997/98 127 420 26.2 1998/99 128 326 26.0 1999/00 138 961 29.0

Note: ^a student data 1993 excludes private institutions

Source: A Decade of Transition: the MONEE Project, CEE/CES/Baltics, UNICEF Innocenti Research centre, 2001. The State Department of Statistics Data

It is not difficult to garner from Table 5.1 above, that this increase was mostly due to the growth in self-financed students both at the private and public sectors in HE.

Public institutions have been trying to increasingly complement scarce public revenues with private funds, mostly by means of study fees. State institutions were authorized to admit self-financed students in 1993 and if during the first academic

50The decrease in the number of public institutions from 26 in 2004 to 25 in 2005 reflects the fact that one public institution (the Georgian Technical University) failed to obtain the state accreditation.

year only 7.8 percent of all students enrolled in the public sector paid tuition fees, by 2002 that figure would be 43.3 percent. Graph 1 below better captures the private-public growth dynamics, showing that private-public enrollments expand in line with the increase of self-financed students, while the latter is negatively correlated with the private enrollment growth.

Figure 5.1: Student Enrollments in Higher Education Institutions in Georgia

Student Enrolments in Higher Education Institutions

0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000 140000 160000

1990/91 1991/92

1992/93 1993/94

1994/95 1995/96

1996/97 1997/98

1998/99 1999/00

2000/01 2001/02

2002/03 2003/04

2004/05 2005/06 Year

Number of Student Enrolments

Total public institution enrolment Number of self-financed students in publics

Total private enrolment

Note: A figure for private enrollments for the academic year of 1993/94 is unavailable.

Source: The State Department of Statistics of Georgia.

Student payments represent the major source of income for most public universities.

In 2001-2002, for example, revenues generated from student tuition at the Tbilisi State University and the Medical University constituted respectively, two and three times higher than funds received from the state (Gvishiani and Chapman 2002). The dependence of public institutions on tuition fees is a remarkable privatization. In finance, it clearly makes the public and private sectors more alike. Indeed the financial change then relates to other changes. It is now difficult to discern the difference between activities undertaken and mission pursued by Georgia’s two

sectors in HE. In an attempt to attract more fee-paying students, public institutions, like private counterparts, have tried hard to stay attuned to labor-market fluctuations by providing training in high demand fields like information technology, law, business administration, and foreign languages. Whatever their full profile, all public universities run programs in market-oriented law and economics. In addition, besides the official Georgian language of instruction, courses are offered in languages of the country’s minorities, such as Russian, Armenian and Azeri, as well as in English and German.

The same holds true for religious education. A wide availability of religious studies in the public sector can be seen as a reaction against communist atheism and reflects the absence of clear separation between the state and religion, which, to a certain extent, obviates the need for its private provision. According to private HE literature, such ethnic and religious appeals have been characteristic of private HE (James 1987, Levy 1987). As the section below will demonstrate, the Georgian case defies certain private sector patterns characteristic elsewhere, but even more remarkable is the private-public juxtaposition – the public sector undertaking a kind of internal diversification (ethnic and religious) normally associated with the private sector, yet largely absent from the Georgian private sector.

Although Georgian developments run parallel to those observed elsewhere in the region, in no other country were public institutions granted with such leeway to open new business oriented courses and new campuses to run them, as in Georgia. Georgia thus represents an extreme case not only with respect to intensive private growth and

its equally intensive fall but also with respect to aberrant public sector in its being private in some key respects.