UCA is expanding academic and economic opportunities for Central Asian youth and professionals.
The School of Professional and Continuing Education (SPCE) is a leading provider of post-secondary, short-cycle education in Central Asia. It gives young people and adults professional and vocational qualifications that improve employment and income generating opportunities. SPCE’s programmes are offered across 12 learning centres in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan, with six satellite learning centres in Afghanistan. SPCE offers 450 modules in seven learning areas, delivered as programmes for targeted constituents.
Since 2006, SPCE has trained more than 200,000 learners in professional and vocational skills based on demand, including English, accounting, information technology and entrepreneurship. More than half of these learners are women, and three-quarters are under the age of 25. The School is also a leading provider of educational literature, having published over 300 textbooks in support of its programmes.
All SPCE certificate programmes are internationally benchmarked, with academic quality and integrity assured through a system of external examiners. SPCE frequently partners with governments at the local, district, oblast and national levels to provide training to civil servants.
UCA's Aga Khan Humanities Project (AKHP) fosters the development of critical thinking and academic writing skills within a multidisciplinary humanities framework.
Established in 1997 by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, AKHP was inherited by UCA in 2007 and has become an important node for the University. It develops and delivers resources, training and courses through its innovative curriculum, faculty development and Humanities in English programmes. AKHP also contributes to the University School of Arts and Sciences' undergraduate core curriculum.
AKHP has reached more than 180,000 students in the region at state universities by training more than 1,515 university instructors in a curriculum that encourages critical thinking, analytical writing and student-centred teaching methods. AKHP is affiliated with 83 universities and colleges in Central Asia.
Through a growing network of partner universities in the region, AKHP is transforming the study of the humanities in Central Asia. This regional project is located at UCA in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and has partnerships and programmes in all three of UCA's founding states.