59 UNDERSTANDING FACULTY PERCEPTIONS OF THE CURRENT STATE OF HIGHER EDUCATION GOVERNANCE IN KAZAKHSTAN Asian Sarinzhipov.Aida Sagintayeva, Kairat Kurakbayev Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan Established trends in higher education governance, including shared governance, institutional autonomy and public accountability, have started to have a long-term impact on the relationship between the state and the institution in the context of post-Soviet countries. Indeed, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we have observed an eclectic mixture of Western educational discourses geared and adapted to post-Soviet realities. Gradual changes in education governance mechanisms and governing structures of academic institutions in the fledgling countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have been long predicted by various scholars (Anderson&Heyneman, 2005; Altbach, 2007; Heyneman, 2010; McLendon, 2004; Froumin&Salmi, 2007). Introduction Many academic institutions in the CIS countries have initiated'institutional restructuring' measures and reforms prompted by governments coupled with political changes permeated with market ideologies since the 1990s. Higher education institutions in Kazakhstan have been no exception. While there is extensive literature on educational transformations in post-Soviet transitional economies, little scholarly attention has been placed on faculty involvement in shared governance. In an effort to shed light on faculty participation in institutional governance, not only from the Central Asian perspective but also from the perspective of globalised higher education systems, this article examines faculty perceptions of the current state of higher education governance in Kazakhstan by utilising both quantitative and qualitative data. The study reported on here involved the analysis of statistical, quantitative results from a sample, followed by in-depth interviews to probe and explore these results. The findings discussed here constitute part of a longitudinal study on the higher education governance and management in Kazakhstan (being conducted by the Centre for Educational Policy, Nazarbayev University). The study addresses six variables: first, faculty perceptions of the governance reforms in the higher education sector; second, faculty perceptions of the state of governance at their home institutions; third, faculty perceptions of the management of research in the system of higher education; fourth, faculty perceptions of their personal influence in their institutions; fifth, faculty perceptions of working conditions at their institutions; and sixth, faculty perceptions of the influence exercised by the administrators on them. We believe this set of variables represents the key dimensions of the faculty involvement in governance. Concerns about the issue of governance, and more specifically, of which governing body in the higher education sector is accountable for managerial decisions, date back to the founding of the American Association of University Professors in 1915. More profoundly, the issue was articulated with the appearance of the 1966 "Statement on Government in Colleges and Universities." This document conceptualised two primary principles. The first calls for the sharing of authority and decision-making participation in all important areas of action in the university. The second principle states that the difference in the weight of