Higher education access in post-Soviet Georgia: overcoming a legacy of corruption

Since 2005, Georgian applicants to higher education (HE) need to accumulate competitive test scores in the Unified National Examinations (UNEs) to gain access to higher education institutions. Applicants to public as well as private universities are required to sit the UNEs. Achievement on these exams serves as the sole criterion for granting HE admission and allocating public funding for university tuition. In this chapter, I provide an overview of the policy of centralized admissions to academic higher education in post-transition Georgia. Literature review and documentary analysis are combined with mixed-methods empirical data to critically examine the existing model of tertiary admissions. The Unified National Examinations helped eliminate deep-rooted corruption practices in higher education admissions by creating a formally equal field for competition among university applicants. I look at successes and failures of the policy in historic and comparative perspectives to argue that the meritocratic policy of equal treatment of unequal people raises serious concerns on group-level disparities by applicant ethnicity, gender, and secondary school characteristics. Comparative lenses show where Georgia stands in relation to other countries in terms of tertiary gross enrollment ratio and selection practices based solely on applicant achievement on entrance examinations.© 2013 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. This chapter has been deposited with open access to ORA with permission from the publisher