“Today, the majority of Armenian scientists don’t know how to write and defend theses, which have been defended before due to lack of languages,” this is how President of the Armenian Association for Academic Partnership and Support Khachik Gevorgyan describes academic studies in Armenia. Gevorgyan sets aside the lack of access to scientific journals and articles among the many issues facing Armenian scientists.
“Not only do universities not provide funds for making those journals accessible, we lack knowledge of how to use them. So, there are minor communications problems,” told “A1+” Khachik Gevorgyan.
In 2007, Professor of Iranian Studies at Yerevan State University and “visiting scholar" at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard, Khachik Gevorgyan, 26, founded the Armenian Association for Academic Partnership and Support (ARMACAD), which has nearly 1400 members in the network.
“ARMACAD has managed to partially solve the problem concerning monopolist academic announcements in Armenia. Before, only a couple of people received information and spread it among whoever they wanted. As a result, the same people went “abroad” without participating in any contest because they were the only ones who applied in Armenia,” says Khachik Gevorgyan.
Gevorgyan says that the academic information is free of charge and there are announcements for conferences, seminars, scholarships and contests in the “ARMACAD” network.
“In a year, we received more than 80 thank-you letters by people who had won the contests,” says Khachik adding that Armenia is not a closed country and that is positive.
