Science:
This autumn, 80 top university graduates in this central Asian
nation will take part in a revived system of candidate (the
Russian equivalent of a Ph.D.) and doctoral degrees in fields
as diverse as art history and zoology. If that sounds modest,
consider how many students last year began postgraduate studies
in Turkmenistan: zero. This is the country's first crop of
postgrads since 1997.Among other signs of progress,
construction has begun on a $35 million building for Turkmen
State's physics and mathematics faculty, and a new campus is in
the works for Turkmen State Medical Institute. The country is
looking beyond its borders as well, with plans this fall to
dispatch 1500 students to overseas universities, including
Columbia University in the US. "If [students] are
off-the-charts good, we should do what we can to overcome any
obstacles and get them here," says Peter Lu, a physicist at
Harvard University, who lectured in Turkmenistan in 2005.
