ASTANA—Nikolaz Foucaud, managing director for Europe, Middle East, and Africa at Coursera, commended the partnership with Kazakhstan in an interview with The Astana Times. Foucaud discussed how generative artificial intelligence (AI) transforms learning experiences and jobs, revealed trends in Central Asia and discussed what Coursera courses are most in demand among Kazakhstan’s learners.
Promising partnership
Foucaud, who joined Coursera in December 2023, oversees EMEA, a crucial region for Coursera with over 35 million learners and 2,000 institutions. Photo credit: Coursera
“I believe Kazakhstan has taken a leadership role, particularly in higher education, but also in general. The focus on science, particularly in the country, is very strong. They have been on the forefront,” said Foucaud, who visited Almaty on June 28 to attend the New Vision forum.
The partnership began in March 2023, when Kazakhstan sought to address the increasing skills gap and rapid population growth. It represents a significant step towards enhancing the country’s educational landscape. It is designed to provide Kazakh students, professionals, and lifelong learners with access to high-quality online courses and degree programs from top universities and companies worldwide.
The Kazakh Ministry of Higher Education and Science integrated more than 650 courses from the world’s top universities and companies on Coursera into 25 universities in the country’s regions. The program also envisions localizing the content in Kazakhstan.
“The vision from the ministry is very compelling and gradual. It went in phases, from introducing online courses to ensuring that those courses became a part of the curriculum for the majority of universities in the country, which is again a leading indicator of success,” he said. “I believe there is also an agreement with Google. Clearly, the country, and the government of Kazakhstan, in particular, is able to close large global deals with the best brands globally to advance education in the country.”
Top Coursera courses in Kazakhstan
Foucaud also revealed the most popular Coursera courses among users in Kazakhstan. There are 538,000 learners on Coursera from Kazakhstan, an increase of 25% compared to the past year. The average year of a learner from the country is 31 years old, and 56% of users from Kazakhstan are women.
The diverse range of subjects reflects the varied educational pursuits of Kazakhstan’s learners. As of the first quarter of 2024, Yale University’s Introduction to Psychology is leading the list, alongside another Yale favorite, The Science of Well-Being.
Language skills are also a top priority, as evidenced by the popularity of several courses from the University of California in Irvine.
Cybersecurity is also a field of interest, with the University System of Georgia’s courses, such as The Foundations of Cybersecurity, Managing Network Security, and The GRC Approach to Managing Cybersecurity, drawing significant attention.
Yale University’s Moral Foundations of Politics and Sciences Po’s Politics and Economics of International Energy round out the list.
Leveraging AI in the learning experience
Generative AI brings Coursera’s course accessibility to a new scale, he noted.
“If we use Kazakhstan as an example, the government and ourselves, historically, have worked with a partner, BMG [Bilim Media Group], in the country to be able to provide full translation of courses. We were able to do that for dozens of courses and then hundreds of courses, and then provide those courses in the local language,” he said, emphasizing the effort put into high-quality translations into Kazakh and Russian.
He pointed out the transformative impact of generative AI on their platform. Over the past 12 months, Coursera has made more than 4,000 courses available in 21 languages. “That has been possible through generative AI,” he noted.
However, future possibilities for AI to enhance the learning experience can go beyond one’s imagination.
“Imagine you are interested in economics and want to learn from the best professor at Stanford, but then they speak to you in your language. I am not talking about translations but just imagine the possibilities. I am not an English native speaker myself, and I know that if we switched over to our native languages in this conversation, it would touch your brain and your heart in a different way. We know that learning preferences are individual, but languages are really a big part of it,” said Foucaud.
Another way AI impacts is what Foucaud describes as the individualization of learning pathways. “This can take many forms,” he added.
One example is Coursera’s Course Builder. Developed in 2023, this AI-assisted authoring tool allows universities and corporations to curate and integrate specific parts of their own content into online courses.
“This is really important for Kazakhstan because you have leading universities and really good bodies of content. There was strong encouragement from the government as well for that content to become available online, so digitize the local content,” he explained.
“Not just take global content, but now, what if you wanted to create a course that would integrate some of that local content with the global best-in-class content on the Coursera platform?” he posed.
Foucaud stressed that previously, creating such integrated courses was labor-intensive and complex. However, the process has been significantly streamlined with the facilitation of generative AI.
He also addressed a critical issue that he described as both a risk and an opportunity: academic integrity.
“What we mean with academic integrity is, as anybody with kids would know, they are super good at learning technologies fast. But then how do we know that they are not using technologies to cheat and get the job done in a faster way, but not necessarily demonstrating the quality of learning,” he said.
He pointed out that Coursera is committed to tackling this challenge head-on. “We are going to have to use AI to beat AI and cheating,” he explained. The focus is on enhancing assessment methodologies to ensure academic honesty.
Shall one be afraid of AI?
When asked whether one should be afraid of AI, Foucaud expressed a strong viewpoint. “If you choose to be afraid, you are putting yourself at risk,” he stated.
Using journalists as an example, he emphasized that AI will not replace a journalist; rather, a journalist who knows how to use AI will surpass one who doesn’t.
“If you embrace it as an opportunity to perhaps get access to information faster, compare your sources faster, maybe give you feedback on your writing,” he said. “It is not about removing the person or your writing or style as a journalist, but it is about augmenting it with a thought partner by your side.”
Challenges to the education system
In discussing the broader educational landscape, Foucaud began by identifying what he sees as the global challenge for the sector. “The challenge is that students may not see the same return on investment that they used to be promised many years ago,” he said. This is primarily due to two factors: the rising costs of high-quality education and the evolving impact of technology on the safety of jobs.
“Globally, costs of high-quality education have gone up much faster than inflation, much faster than the parents’ ability or the students’ ability to pay for their tuition. Good quality education worldwide has become more and more expensive,” he said.
Concurrently, technological advancements, particularly AI, have dramatically altered the job market. “Before, if you didn’t have a degree, then you were most at risk of automation. But now we are talking about the notion of intelligence being scaled up by technology,” he said. Jobs traditionally considered safe from technological disruption, such as those in accounting, law, and teaching, are now vulnerable. As education becomes more expensive, the return on investment is increasingly questioned, especially when the job market is so unpredictable.
“Your job is as much at risk as a job that didn’t get a degree,” Foucaud added.
In response, Coursera is focusing on professional certificates and credentialing. This approach aims to provide learners with evidence of specific skills directly linked to job competencies.
“If you think about IBM, Google, Microsoft, AWS, getting a certificate from those trusted brands that you have demonstrated a skill level is now seen by employers as something that they deeply value,” he said.
While traditional degrees from trusted institutions still hold value, there is a growing demand for additional, up-to-date certifications. He said Coursera sees a shift from focusing all of one student’s financial investment on one degree to a combination that includes professional certificates and credentials.
Hard skills vs. soft skills
Foucaud noted a gap between the priorities of learners and employers. Learners tend to focus heavily on mastering their technology and business skills, believing these will be most in demand, and he said they are right.
“But when we ask employers what creates the condition for promotion and advancement inside of that company, so not necessarily hiring, seems to be predicated more on communication, presentation, collaboration, adaptability, and resistance to change. There is an interesting combination here,” he explained.
Hiring, though, still focuses on ensuring candidates possess the necessary hard skills.
Trends for Central Asia
Foucaud highlighted two pivotal trends shaping the workforce in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Firstly, he noted a significant rise in women’s participation on Coursera’s platform. “We are seeing more women compared to the global average and an increase in the percentage of women taking courses on the platform, specifically preparing for jobs with professional certificates,” he said.
The second notable trend is the growing access to remote work, which offers substantial financial advantages. “We are seeing a 20% to 28% difference between a software developer taking a local job in this region versus the same developer with the same skills taking a remote job,” he said.
These two trends, when combined, reveal an emerging opportunity for a new class of employees. “What emerges is the opportunity for a new class of employees that perhaps weren’t available on the market before because they couldn’t do flexible hours or they couldn’t commute easily. There is a proportion of that segment of the population that is now becoming available to take on jobs that are distributed globally and contribute to the local economy,” he explained, noting higher wages lead to increased spending power.
