Higher Education in Mongolia: Before and After Pandemic

Abstract

Mongolia is the second largest landlocked country in the world. The development of a country depends a lot on educated mass of the nation. Therefore, the education system, especially the higher education system of Mongolia is facing many challenges today. In the early 90s, the education system was managed by Russian influence and after the 90s the situation changed dramatically. Many private universities were established after democratic movement in the country. During the pandemic period, Mongolian education sector faced many problems, same as with other countries. But Mongolian Government managed education during the pandemic successfully and is now looking forward to focus on the quality of higher education. This chapter will cover the state of the education system in Mongolia, especially after pandemic period.

1. Introduction to Mongolia

Mongolia is located in the middle of the Asian continent. Mongolia has 1,564,116 km² area and counts as the 18th biggest country in the world [1] with a population of 3.409 million [2]. Moreover, Mongolia is the second largest landlocked country [3] after Kazakhstan in the world (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Map of Mongolia [4].

Mongolia has 71.1 million livestock, an inflation rate of 12.2%, GDP of 52.9 trillion and 4.8%, unemployment rate of 5.3%, average household income of 1.8 million, and labor force participation of 57.9% respectively [5].

Table 1 shows that Mongolia is one of the youngest nations in the world. Children up to 14 years old in total 1,095,258 which is 32.12% of the whole population. Young people between ages 15 and 24 are in total 454,602, which is 13.33% of the population. Active working population between ages 25 and 59 is 1,597,695 which is 46.85% of the population.

Age group	Population
0–4	375,503
5–9	396,080
10–14	323,675
15–19	220,796
20–24	233,806
25–29	251,605
30–34	310,652
35–39	270,782
40–44	232,177
45–49	208,273
50–54	174,130
55–59	150,076
60–64	110,538
65–69	65,804
70+	86,042
Total	3,409,939

Table 1.

Age group of Mongolian population.

One of the highlights of the country is its history. It is a nation which established and led one of the biggest empires in the world history. Mongolians have their own writing from that great empire. Writing development of the Mongolians is divided into several classifications: first period—starting from unknown year to the end of the thirteenth century, second period—from the beginning of the fourteenth to end of the sixteenth century, third period—from the seventeenth century [6]. Later some other scholars updated these classifications: first period: before classical time century from the thirteenth to fourteenth, early years of classical time century from the fourteenth to fifteenth, late years of classical time century from the fifteenth to sixteenth, second period: classical time from seventeenth to twentieth century, third period: modern time twentieth century [7]. Since 1943, Mongolians accepted to usage of Cyrillic letters as basic writing [8]. Based on this change government increased literacy of population and as result of this action in 1946 already 95% of whole population was able to read and write with Cyrillic letters [9]. Nowadays, Mongolia (98.37%) [10] is one of literate country in the world (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Ranking literate countries [10].

2. Education system of Mongolia

Mongolian education system is divided into several parts: preschool education, elementary schools, secondary schools, postsecondary education, technical and vocational education, tertiary education, and lifelong education (Figure 3). All citizens of Mongolia have to enroll in schools starting from age 6, and it is confirmed by national law [11]. This law manages all policies for formal and informal education processes in the country.

Figure 3.

Education system of Mongolia.

Pre-school education law defines different types of the educational organizations [12]. The umbrella term for all those organizations is defined as “kindergarten.” The kindergartens are divided into several types depending on the targeted groups:

• Kindergarten—children from 2 years up to 5 years

• Special kindergarten—children from 2 years up to 5 years with special needs

• Sanatorium kindergarten—children from 2 years up to 5 years who need mental or body care

• Groups with extended hours—groups organized by request of parents, based on decree of kindergartens’ director which works 1–3 hours longer each day

• Groups with shortened hours—groups organized by request of parents, based on decree of kindergartens’ director which works 1–3 hours shorter each day

• 24 hours group—groups organized by request of parents, based on decree of kindergartens’ director and the local stakeholders who work all 5 working days for 24 hours

Main aim of this law is to provide all children the possibility to enroll into corresponding kindergarten before school. In the academic year 2022–2023 for preschool education 266,024 children enrolled, and corresponding 9450 primary teachers, 8277 assistant teachers worked with them [13].

By the law of “Elementary and primary education,” for primary education pupils need to study 5 years, for low secondary education 9 years, and for secondary education 12 years [14]. In 2023, 859 schools are working for 12 years of education in the country. 293 of them are located in the capital city Ulaanbaatar [15]. 746,400 pupils are studying in these schools.

In the academic year 2022–2023, 69 universities are actively working for higher education of the country. 47.8% of them count as universities, 50.7% as higher institutions, and 1.4% as colleges [16]. There are 16 public universities, 50 of them are private, and 3 of them are religious universities. For the most part, 92.8% of all higher institutions are located in the capital city Ulaanbaatar. The total number of students is 145,267, and there are 38.9% male and 61.1% female students. The number of employees in the higher education is 11,923 and 43.4% of this or 5169 are teaching staff.

Mongolian education was completely free of charge for all levels before 1990s. After democratic movement, education system of the country changed dramatically. There were many different changes in higher education and one of the new issues was fee for higher education. Tuition fee in 1994 was between 21,000 and 32,000 tugriks [17]. By opinion of some authors [18] higher education system of Mongolia needs to react to modern requests of labor market in sense of quality.

Tuition fees of universities usually change every year depending on the economic capacity of the country. Since 1992 universities converted to credit system as in the USA and other developed countries. Each year universities re-define their cost for a credit. Table 2 shows the estimated cost of credits in some universities.

	University	Cost for basic courses/Tugriks/	Cost for professional courses/Tugriks/	Total/Tugriks/
1	Mongolian National University	98,600	100,700–120,800	2,900,000
2	Mongolian National University of Education	78,000	92,000	2,300,000
3	Mongolian University of Science and Technology	—	107,040	3,211,200
4	University of Finance and Economics	—	185,000	5,900,000
5	Mongolian National University of Medical Sciences	40,700	117,610	2,800,000
6	Mongolian University of Life Sciences	100,000	127,000–156,000	4,300,000

Table 2.

Tuition fee of universities (2022–2023) [19].

In 2022, Ministry of Education and Science, Statistics focused their attention to the quality of the universities. The minister of the Ministry of Education and Science, L.Enkh-Amgalan decided to cancel licenses of 13 universities which did not fit the requirements of the Ministry of Education and Science relating to quality [20]. To provide opportunities for continues study of enrolled students Ministry of Education and Science accepted to transfer 1500 students of those 13 universities to other universities.

3. Higher education in Mongolia: Before pandemic

The democratic change in Mongolia in 90s gave various choices for selection of universities for students. The new political movement affected dramatically in change of higher education of the country, simultaneously. Before democratic change in government all universities in the country were only of public status and all financial issues were tasks of the government. All educations were free of any tuition fee including tertiary educations and professional educations.

The higher education system was established with the support of Soviet Union after World War II. It was almost a direct copy of Russian education system into Mongolia. But after 90s it changed fast and dynamically, which attracted interest of many national and international scholars [21, 22, 23, 24, 25]. After the change public universities started to change their status and names, moreover, many private universities with various programs were established [26].

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) supports in years the development of strategic issues of Mongolian education system. Projects with funding of ADB started getting implemented in different areas of education systems, such as Education Sector Development Program (ESDP) funded by ADB and in 1996 [27]. Not only ADB but many other international foundations and organizations invested in projects in education of Mongolia. In 2006, already 49 different projects were funded by international organizations as part of education [28].

e-Learning and distance learning started being implemented in higher education of the country actively after the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies with rapid development of internet. But e-learning was not welcomed by all faculty members of universities and even by students. Some study from 2019 showed that e-learning is effective only for master programs [29].

Professors at universities started to accept social media and tried to apply them as useful tool for teaching and learning. A study shows that social science professors are more adaptive to social media as a tool than natural science professors [30].

One of the biggest issues in development of higher education system was the financial issues. Before 90s, all education systems were public organizations and finance problems were solved by the government. After 90s, even public universities had to manage their own finances. Not only private universities, the so-called public universities such as: Mongolian National University (MNU), Mongolian University of Science and Technology (MUST) were almost confronted to manage their finance issues based on the students’ study tuition fee [31].

With change of the structure and type of universities there were discussions on program development and revision of curriculums. Scholars studied on these issues and started to give recommendations to university stakeholders to do revision and fundamental change on curriculums [32].

Some scholars found out with their study that globalization is essential in higher education, and universities have to be aware of this point in their strategic plans and curriculum updates [33].

Higher education is the main focus of Mongolian families. Most parents, independently from their annual income, want to send their children to university. It is provided by various choices of private universities who cannot pass usual level for public universities. Due to this attitude of families in general, Mongolians are highly educated compared with other developing countries. Some study highlighted that an overeducation is happening in Mongolia and it can affect the labor market negatively [34].

By international scholars’, a study discovered that Mongolian higher education reform in curriculum runs with the support and influence of European countries, and fund organizations from abroad [35]. The study program and curriculum updates are run under consultation from European countries and it can result in more western style of teaching in universities. Number of universities in Mongolia can make problems for higher education noted by international scholars [36]. Due to this issue, they concluded that the quality assurance should be handled with great care. Based on some internal and external assessment with focus on quality issues, it was recognized that information and communication literacy and computer skills need to develop as support for faculty members. Moreover, salary level of all kind of teachers’ needs to be increased to support quality in the education system of the country [37].

Table 3 shows statistic data [38] of higher education institutions (universities) between 2010 and 2019.

Type of universities		2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019
Universities	Total	113	101	99	100	101	100	95	96	94	95
	Public	16	15	15	16	16	17	17	18	18	21
	Private	97	86	84	84	85	83	78	78	76	74

Table 3.

Universities in Mongolia (2010–2019).

The statistics shows that in 2010 in total 113 higher education institutions are active in Mongolia. 97 of them were private universities, only 16 of them were public universities. Due to strategic policies of the Ministry, the number of universities were reduced in 2019. In 2019, 95 universities were active in the country. Number of public universities increased up to 21, and number of private universities decreased down to 74. Most universities were located in the capital city Ulaanbaatar. 85 universities are located in the capital city, and the remaining 10 are located in rural areas of the country.

Number of students in 2010 was 170, 100 and it decreased in 2019 with total number of 148, 400 [39]. International students’ number in 2010 was 1520 but it declined in 2019 to 959 (Figure 4). The reason for reduction of foreign students can be due to beginning of COVID-19 regulations worldwide.

Figure 4.

Number of students (2010–2019).

Most wanted study direction in 2010 was Business and management, same as in 2019. But interest in study direction law increased from 8261 to 11,248 (Table 4). Unfortunately, students in engineering were dramatically reduced from 24,274 to 14,282 [40].

Professional	2010	2019
Total number of students	170,126	148,446
Pedagogy	22,471	22,854
Humanity	11,610	7148
Art and Design	3147	4761
Law	8261	11,248
Social Science	11,864	5983
Business management	36,375	32,615
Mathematics and Computer Science	6722	5626
Service	8843	6528
Nature science	5210	3817
Medical science	17,995	20,903
Engineering	24,274	14,282
Architecture	5710	5596
Agriculture	4902	2239
Others	593	3300

Table 4.

Comparison of study directions (2010 and 2019).

Table 5 shows [41, 42] statistics about faculty members between 2010 and 2019. The Figure 4 shows number of students between 2010 and 2019. And this fact demonstrated that number of students have been reduced from 2010 to 2019. But Table 5 confirms that number of faculty members have not changed significantly during this period.

Faculty members	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019
Total	7183	7295	7331	7385	7528	7121	6917	6724	6668	7330
Female	4174	4287	4371	4542	4628	4368	4130	3997	4028	4491
Male	3009	3008	2960	2843	2900	2753	2787	2727	2640	2839

Table 5.

Faculty members (2010–2019).

4. Higher education in Mongolia: During pandemic

The COVID-19 shocked education systems of almost all countries in the world. Mongolia could not avoid it as well. The neighboring country China was core of the pandemic and Mongolia had to manage accordingly to upcoming situations. Comparing with reaction of some other countries to pandemic and solutions for challenges by Mongolia were fast enough and correct [43]. Mongolian Government established special committee at the State Emergency Committee (SEC) [44] and created the Disaster Protection Law to manage situations during pandemic [45, 46, 47, 48, 49].

One of main challenge of the education during COVID was engagement and motivation of students, who suddenly had to study from distance. Consortium of Mongolian Universities made decree to teach all courses fully online since 27th of January 2020 for all higher institutions [50] (Figure 5). Most universities used, as basic tools for online teaching, open course learning management systems like Moodle, Google Meet, Google Classroom and some commercial versions like Zoom and Skype.

Figure 5.

Learning during pandemic online at home.

To figure out the engagement rate as well as satisfaction level of students with the online teaching, scholars did various studies [51, 52, 53, 54, 55]. Most of studies showed that unexpected change of teaching and learning mode was a difficult situation not only for professors and teachers, but for students and learners as well. To estimate satisfaction of students regarding the quality of teaching during pandemic period, data from students at the end of second semester of academic year 2019–2022 were collected. In total, 202 students responded to this survey and 88% of them evaluated online teaching as satisfactory. This study showed that teaching hours and preparation needed for teaching increased by 1.2–2 times in comparison with normal teaching period [50] (Figure 6).

Figure 6.

Teaching during pandemic [56].

During COVID period world organizations supported education sectors of countries to unexpected situations with professional guidance. For example, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization of the United Nations provided different actual reports and experiences from countries in education sector [57].

There were various discussions related to higher education during pandemic. The critical situation required urgent and smart decisions which could react to actual problems of the pandemic. That period emphasized value of higher education and science. Universities tried to keep education processes active even it during unexpected situations. Some authors estimated that lack of higher education due to the pandemic will come out later and can be influence to world economy negatively [58].

The National Accreditation Committee together with About Asia Pacific Quality Network (APQN) organized an international conference on “Quality assurance of learning and teaching during pandemic” from 25th to 26th of November in 2020 [59]. Several experts from different countries were invited as keynote speakers to the conference and highlighted about motivation of students during pandemic, support technical issues of students for distance learning, cooperation between students and lecturers on online teaching and learning. One of the conclusions from this conference was to focuses on increasing the support for technical problems in teaching during pandemic period.

Digital competences of university faculty members, readiness of teaching skills of the staff was highlighted during pandemic. By the decree of the Minister of Ministry of Education and Science A/67 following points were highlighted in the education sector [60]:

• Policies of information and communication technologies;

• Curriculums and its evaluation;

• Teaching methodologies;

• Information and communication technologies;

• Learning management;

• Teachers’ development

Regional UNISEF and UNESCO conducted a study on current situation on education during pandemic period for East Asia focusing on China, Japan, Republic of Korea and Mongolia. Comparison with other countries showed Mongolia reacted strongly to COVID-19 and closed duration time of schools was much longer than other 3 countries. As highlighted in the report “In Mongolia, schools were closed for an initial period of eight months, opened in September 2020 and closed again in November and are not due to reopen until March 2021.” [61]. In this report the total budget impact of the focused countries was included. Collected data showed additional budgets which were needed to respond for COVID-19 from countries. The value of the budget ranges from $677 million in Mongolia to $315.8 billion in China in the baseline scenario.

5. Higher education in Mongolia

The strange period was over. However, the state of the education did not return back to daily life immediately. Strong long lockdown, sudden change in teaching and learning mode influenced to psychology of teachers and learners.

The education during pandemic brought teaching and learning to a new atmosphere. E-learning, online learning and distance learning were not so welcomed by learners and parents before COVID. But requested situation during pandemic period, teachers and learners had no choice, therefore, had to adapt to new teaching and learning environment: online and distance forms. This had positive impacts on education after pandemic. Distance and online teaching mode open new opportunities especially for higher education system. Mixed version of teaching and learning is more accepted by professors and students [62].

Sudden change of the teaching and learning mode was difficult challenge not only for students, it was a demanding change for professors all around the world. In 2020, universities performed self-evaluation for acceptance and adaptation of university lecturers and professors with new teaching modes: e-learning and distance learning [63]. Study results showed that professors faced problems with assessment of online learning and openly highlighted problems of change in teaching mode.

Scholars studied implementation of e-learning in higher education after the pandemic. The survey which collected data from 726 faculty members of various universities showed that 72.65% of the responses highlighted a need of corresponding teaching and learning environment for e-learning [64].

6. Conclusion

After the pandemic, for academic year 2021–2022, in total 148,954 students studied in 88 universities [65]. 79.5% of those universities had national accreditations. 89 study programs of 17 universities received international accreditation certificates. Number of international students were 1547 and most of them 76.4% were students from China (Figure 7).

Figure 7.

International students in Mongolia [65].

Number of faculty members were reduced to 14.6% in 2022 comparison with 2021. Teaching mode has changed from traditional classroom teaching into online teaching during these years and this was one of the main reasons for this kind of reduction.

Nowadays biggest challenges which higher education is facing are digital literacy difference of analog professors and digital learners, different views on digital world of professors and students. Most professors of higher education institutions are aged over 40, born before internet, smart devices and social networks era [66]. Daily digital life was not known for today’s professors for their student period or education years.

Next issue of modern higher education is hard and soft skills which students are expected to have during university years. Knowledge and proof of formal education were the most required measurements for the labor market in twentieth century. But situation dramatically changed with digital world and in twenty-first century hard and soft skills are more essential for any kind of labor markets. Mongolian Government recognized this issue and included special phase into “A Knowledge-based Society and a Skillful Mongol” objective as one of key target of the project [67].

An additional key point of higher education is the learning attitude of modern students which changed a lot due to the actual digital contents and huge opportunities of e-world.

Universities in Mongolia have tuition fees which is for some families not easy to pay. Therefore, the Government of Mongolia supports young people who received the right to study but are not able to pay the study fee. Since 1993 Mongolian Government started to distribute scholarship from “Government Foundation.”

Satisfaction of students with their study and learning environment is one of the key issues and scholars working on this. SERVQUAL, TIMKO and KANO models were applied to process data from university students in 2022. Result shows that many factors are important for satisfaction of students. Learning environments like: clean and comfortable classrooms, internet access and speed, employer communication skills, reputation of the university, and time managements, to name a few [68]. This study results were proofed by national scholars’ evaluation of influence factors for satisfaction [69].

Mongolian government is currently trying to estimate further development of higher education and conducted a study regarding the plans from 2020 to 2050 (Figure 8).

Figure 8.

Enrollment of students into higher education [70].

By this study, number of students will increase in coming two decades. Average age of students is between 20 and 34 by statistics and population in these ages will increase: total population between 20 and 34 will be 693,500 in 2025 and 1100 00 in 2050.