Mongolian Higher Education in Transition

Abstract

T rapid change in the higher education system of Mongolia over the past decade reflects several unique aspects, especially in comparison with the systems in the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. In part, this is due to its unique location and political history, which enable it to draw for assistance upon both the East (Japan, Korea, and the Asian Development Bank) and the West (the European Union and the United States). It is also due, in part, to the unique course Mongolia has taken with respect to the funding of higher education. The Mongolian People’s Republic was established in 1924 as the world’s second communist country; the single-party government held onto power until 1990. Mongolia maintained close political and economic ties with the USSR, but was never one of its constituent republics. At the peak of this relationship, almost a third of Mongolia’s GDP was provided by the Soviet Union. This included significant support (e.g., books, equipment, and the training of academics and researchers) for Mongolian higher education. The higher education system on the eve of the transition in 1990 reflected its Soviet roots: highly specialized, with only one, relatively comprehensive (arts and sciences disciplines, secondary school pedagogy, law), institution (the National University of Mongolia) existing alongside independent, specialized, universitylevel institutions for medicine, engineering, agriculture, pedagogy, and the arts and culture. All public institutions had student enrollments quotas set by the National Planning Board, based on anticipated demand for graduates trained in each narrowly defined specialization. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, external financial support evaporated, and a democratic political structure was established to guide this landlocked country of 2.4 million people through a series of transitions: • political—from single-party rule to a multiparty democracy, based on a national constitution; from strong ideological monitoring to tolerance of pluralism; and from centralization to decentralization; • economic—from a command (centrally planned) to a market economy; from state to private ownership of property; from government revenues generated by stateowned enterprises to taxes on personal income and private enterprises; and • social—from a “classless” society to status based on personal achievement and earned income; from collective to personal responsibility; from government-provided health care and a social “safety net” to individually paid health insurance and limited government involvement. Under the “socialist” political structure, institutional autonomy did not exist. Government plans specified, in detail, the funds authorized for expenditure by each higher education institution, the structure and content of the curriculum, faculty workload and compensation, number of students, and the placement of graduates. Under a democratic political structure, these functions have increasingly become the responsibility of individual higher education institutions. However, despite receiving advice from external consultants to consolidate and rationalize the system (88 percent of the nation’s public higher education students are enrolled in Ulaanbaatar), virtually the same specialized institutions remain in place at the end of the 1990s as existed at the end of the Soviet era.