FAMILY AS A SILENT DECISION-MAKER IN PRIVATE UNIVERSITY ENROLLMENT: EVIDENCE FROM TASHKENT

In many higher education systems, university enrollment choices are seen to be as individual choices guided by academic interests, preferences the trends in the market. (Hemsley-Brown & Oplatka, 2015; Kotler & Fox, 1995). In Uzbekistan, students, that apply to private universities do not make the decision themselves alone. This conference paper is based on the results driven from doctoral PhD dissertation on socio-cultural determinants with regards to private university choices in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and examines the way enrollment decisions are formed and shaped after going through filters of family discussions, shared value judgments, and social expectations the exist in Tashkent. Based on a mixed-methods approach study of 275 students that are enrolled in private universities of the capital Tashkent, the paper combined google survey with qualitative student accounts in order to demonstrate how Uzbek families act as the early gatekeepers of the admission process for the students, it is a pattern that is widely observed in collectivist and post-Soviet societies (Hofstede, 2011; Marginson, 2016).