Business-education Partnerships as Basis for Effective Socioeconomic Development: Lessons for Kazakhstan

The author identifies the challenges faced by Kazakhstani universities and business environment during socioeconomic transformation. The research provides a general overview of the “gaps” between Educational sector and Business sphere in Kazakhstan. Moreover, it reveals the graduate skills differences in Kazakhstan and determine the extent to which the quality of graduates fails to meet the expectation of employers.The main goal of the article is to distinguish the main invocations and opportunities for effective cooperation in the development of Business – Education partnership in Kazakhstan, to evaluate the skills acquired by MBA graduates and to assess the impact made by a business education on socioeconomic development of the state.The selected methodology for this study is a combination of desk research, primary research (through quantitative and qualitative techniques and methods of data collection) that aim to enable triangulation of findings and thus to provide more reliable data for a better understanding of business-education cooperation outcomes.