By Alexander Pracht
For over a century, Yerevan has been Armenia’s higher education hub, following a model common in former Soviet states. The privately owned and centrally located trade schools of the imperial era were reclassified as universities under Bolshevik rule and evolved without distinct campuses, embedded in the city’s core.
That may soon change. The government announced plans to build a vast suburban campus on Yerevan’s northwestern edge about four years ago, relocating all Yerevan-based universities. Though the site is within city limits, it remains mostly undeveloped. Critics cite the absence of a feasibility study, lack of public input, vague planning, and the risk of further weakening Yerevan’s academic ecosystem. Concerns also include the plan’s multibillion cost, expected to be offset by selling off central university properties.
What is the plan exactly?
Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan first hinted at the Academic City project in 2021, stating that the government intends to sell the existing buildings of Armenia’s public universities in order to fund the construction of a new academic hub outside Yerevan. A year and a half later, in September 2022, he formally announced the plan during a cabinet meeting.
“Our universities, both in terms of physical infrastructure and the quality of education, often fall short of international standards,” Pashinyan said. “There are either no academic standards in the country, or they are simply not enforced. People graduate with diplomas that don’t make them competitive on the labor market.”
The government’s initial idea was to merge eight state-run universities and relocate them to a newly built campus in Ashtarak, a provincial capital of 20,000 residents located about 20 kilometers northwest of Yerevan. Later revisions brought the proposed location closer to Yerevan, though still along the same highway leading to Ashtarak.
According to current plans, the Academic City will consist of three main clusters, with more than $1 billion worth of investments. An art cluster will be constructed on the former Hayfilm studio grounds, while a technological cluster will occupy the premises of the Yerevan Physics Institute’s satellite campus. A military-educational cluster is also planned, likely in cooperation with international universities. The art cluster is expected to be the first to take shape.
The government says the new campus will provide comprehensive living and educational conditions for both students and academic staff. Designed to accommodate 50,000 people, the campus will include residential neighborhoods, research centers, sports facilities, a public park, an open-air amphitheater, and is even expected to host a new national stadium. In addition to the eight state-run institutions, eight international universities are now expectednew to join the project.
Last August, Pashinyan announced that the Academic City’s master plan, developed by a German company, had been completed. The campus is currently set to be opened in 2030.
What’s the problem with moving campus?
Introducing the Academic City project, the Education Ministry promised to bring about a new campus culture to Armenia while increasing student mobility by providing vast credits and course flexibility.
Critics, however, argue that Yerevan is already an organically developed academic city, with institutions like the Yerevan State University, the University of Economics, the Institute of Physical Education, and the Pedagogical University located along the same axis in the capital. Yet, despite their proximity, these universities have not launched a single joint project in at least the past two decades.
Additionally, critical voices from the professional community have raised alarms about both the content and direction of the project, which has prompted concerns over its feasibility and effectiveness. Tigran Shahverdyan, the co-founder of the California-based Robomart startup and a prominent member of the Gituzh initiative, a project aimed at strengthening Armenia through science and technology, expressed serious reservations about the Academic City project when speaking to EVN Report last July.
According to Shahverdyan, many aspects of the project are not sufficiently grounded in logic, and despite the various meetings held, there is a noticeable lack of substantive discussion. He conveyed the impression that the decisions surrounding the initiative were dogmatic, set in stone with little room for meaningful debate about the clear goals or targets.
“There are risks associated with concentrating the entire intellectual potential in one location,” Shahverdyan warned. “Moreover, this is a program of unclear scale, with neither the budget nor the stages of implementation clearly defined.”
Shahverdyan’s skepticism arises from the fact that decisions are being made, such as designing blueprints and allocating spaces, without first establishing a robust framework based on Armenia’s specific needs.
He believes that Armenia’s ability to become a competitive country depends on the development of a scientific and experimental research system that directly addresses the country’s specific challenges. According to Shahverdyan, however, the current approach seems more focused on a trial-and-error process. He also argued that it is possible to foster closer ties between universities and research institutes within the existing system.
Putting most of the country’s academia into one bubble may indeed be a dangerous idea, Narek Sukiasyan, a political scientist and a lecturer at the American University of Armenia said in an interview with CivilNet. “There is a risk that those who move to the Academic City might turn into an elitist group, cut off from society, that would live there in utopian conditions and lose touch,” he argued.
At the same time, Sukiasyan noted that a similar project had been successfully realized in the late 1950s near Novosibirsk, a city in Siberia, where the academic city quickly became one of the world’s leading scientific centers.
Thomas Estermann from the European University Association believes that bringing sixteen universities together in one place is unprecedented and unlikely to succeed. “The more institutions you try to merge, the more complex the process becomes — and the chances of success drop,” he told CivilNet. “In most cases, mergers involve no more than four universities. There are some examples of larger consolidations, but never under a single unified structure.”
Aune Valk, Vice Rector of the University of Tartu in Estonia, confirmed that relocating or merging academic institutions often leads to a loss of staff and long-established connections.
“After such mergers, there is rarely a proper evaluation to determine whether the decision was justified,” she said. “It might be possible in Armenia, but in Estonia it’s hard to imagine relocating an entire academic community from one city to another.”
She cited a local example: “At one point, the government decided to move the Ministry of Education and Research to Tartu, while keeping all other ministries in Tallinn. It was intended as a regional development policy, but in the end, only one or two staff members stayed. Everyone else left, and the ministry essentially became a different institution.”
How did the academia and the broader public respond to the project?
Despite widespread skepticism toward the idea, there has been surprisingly little resistance. One of the few institutions to publicly oppose the move is the Komitas State Conservatory, Armenia’s leading music college.
“Our stance is that the Conservatory must definitely remain in its current location in the city center as a separate university,” Tsovinar Movsisyan, Vice Rector of the Conservatory, told CivilNet. “We wouldn’t mind also having some sort of presence in Academic City, though.”
The opposition is understandable: the Conservatory sits just across the street from the Yerevan Opera House and boasts numerous on-campus facilities, including performance halls and recording studios.
Most other universities have maintained a relatively neutral stance. Notably, none of the university leaders were included in the ten-member working group — not even the president of the National Academy of Sciences. Still, 12 universities and 36 research institutions did submit their proposals during the discussion phase.
Public outreach efforts have also met with limited interest. Even talks open to the general public, intended to foster discussion and transparency, have attracted little to no attendance. For instance, a meeting held in August 2023, reported by Hetq, saw very limited public turnout.
Making room for an Academy City
While the site envisioned for the Academic City is largely undeveloped, it does include one of Yerevan’s most symbolically loaded spaces, the grounds of the former Hayfilm Studios. Once one of the Soviet Union’s most prestigious film production complexes, Hayfilm has mostly sat idle in recent decades, with occasional makeshift public events and gatherings held in its buildings.
The inclusion of the Soviet-era complex in the new campus plans has stirred frustration among locals. During the online public discussion of the project draft, many pointed to Hayfilm as an example of lost cultural capital.
“In general, the Academic City project is not justified in any way,” wrote Sergey Hovsepyan, a concerned citizen. “The quality of education is not determined by territory. If there are no specialists in the country, it means the relevant professions aren’t being practiced. Take Hayfilm, for example: it was one of the largest and most influential film studios in the USSR, and its reputation was enormous. For years we’ve been told there’s no money to renovate Hayfilm, but now there’s money for a project three or four times its size?”
Meanwhile, the construction of a new village for around 1,400 residents adjacent to the Academic City has also encountered uncertainty. The Pan-Armenian Congress charitable organization purchased land near the site years ago with plans for agricultural development, with its future now in limbo.
The organization has petitioned various authorities, including the Ministry of Education, to change the land’s designated purpose. However, their request has faced objections, particularly from the Cadastre Committee. Representatives of the organization claim that they are being subjected to a hidden corruption scheme.
The Cadastre Committee told CivilNet that they had provided their position to the developer twice last year. In one instance, they deemed the proposed change unsuitable, while in another, they stated they would revisit the issue after the main layout for the Academic City is approved.
As of the latest plans, the construction of the new campus is scheduled to start this October, and it is expected to welcome its first students and professors in January 2030. A huge project for Armenia, it is still unclear how it will unfold and whether universities will be content with relocating. For now, it seems to reflect more of a top-down vision of modernization than a carefully tailored solution to the real challenges facing Armenia’s higher education, research, and science sectors.
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