Mongolia’s paradoxical education problem

Creator: Orkhon Gantogtokh, College of British Columbia

In 2019, Mongolia ranked 102 out of 141 nations within the International Competitiveness Report. Its areas of weak point included the prominence of analysis establishments, scientific publications, graduate abilities and ease of discovering expert staff. On this closing class, Mongolia ranked 140 out of 141.

In a seemingly paradoxical distinction, Mongolia has the best variety of universities per capita, with 88 larger schooling establishments (HEIs) for a inhabitants of three million. College enrolment charges are virtually on par with the European gross enrolment fee of 73 per cent. The variety of analysis diploma college students additionally tripled between 2000 and 2018, giving Mongolia one of many largest numbers of doctoral college students per 1000 folks. This implies that Mongolia has an honest quantity of human sources within the analysis and growth (R&D) sector.

But the nation lacks analysis capability and high-skilled staff. Expanded larger schooling is vital to bettering nationwide analysis capability. So why does a rustic with so many college graduates lack extremely expert staff?

This paradox of accelerating institutional capability however stagnating human sources stems from conflicting ambitions in larger schooling reform. For the reason that Nineteen Nineties, worldwide organisations and out of doors advisors have pushed neoliberal reforms upon Mongolian policymakers. This has included enabling privatised larger schooling, whereas additionally reducing the general share of GDP and public expenditure dedicated to larger schooling.

Mongolia is without doubt one of the few nations globally that allocates minimal share of their price range to larger schooling. Because of this, Mongolia’s larger schooling sector is primarily financed by scholar tuition charges. Solely 0.1 per cent of the nation’s GDP has been spent on R&D, a lot decrease than the OECD common of two.68 per cent. The Mongolian authorities’s minimal funding in bodily capital has resulted in low ranges of analysis capability.

Bettering the governance of state universities is on the core of Mongolia’s efforts to reform its larger schooling sector. By the mid-Nineteen Nineties, as a way to make its state-run universities autonomous and self-sufficient, Mongolia adopted a type of college governance much like that of the USA.

However state universities haven’t achieved this much-desired autonomy as a result of ruling events’ diverging pursuits and short-term political reversals. Political interference and micro-politics at state universities have adversely affected the management, human sources and total efficiency of upper schooling.  Educational advantage as a key consideration in hiring and selling has been changed with political patronage and nepotism. Competent students who disagreed with the corrupt system went overseas, lowering a vital expertise pool.

Reforms have been aimed on the unification of instructing and analysis in universities. However the current system continues to be Soviet in construction. Analysis was not an integral a part of an instructional’s tasks till the Nineteen Nineties. Throughout the Chilly Conflict there was an Academy of Sciences which was answerable for conducting analysis. Despite the fact that many HEIs in Mongolia declare that they’re analysis universities, most retain robust instructing and weak analysis capabilities.

Analysis tradition in Mongolian universities requires important consideration for the sake of sustainable analysis growth. This cultural shift requires new competencies and attitudinal adjustments in managing analysis.

Curiously, the modern-day Academy of Science doesn’t have a analysis output stronger than that of universities. For instance, the 5 main public universities’ publications are extra quite a few than these authored by researchers affiliated with the Academy of Sciences. In 2018–2021, universities printed over 50 per cent extra items on the Net of Science than the Academy of Sciences.

This raises one other query. Why is Mongolia’s most distinguished analysis establishment receiving the nation’s greatest share of the analysis price range when its analysis profile is decrease than universities’?

Conflicting ambitions in larger schooling reform have resulted within the rising amount however lowering high quality of the nation’s analysis capability. The nation’s analysis capability is constructed on a number of parts, together with satisfactory funding, coaching and availability of analysis workers, techniques to retain folks in R&D actions, an expanded larger schooling system and analysis tradition. Though Mongolia has expanded larger schooling, established native analysis coaching and has a superb variety of R&D personnel, these elements should not ample to construct analysis capability. Mongolia lacks different important elements together with good governance, rigorous analysis tradition and satisfactory funding.

The Mongolian authorities declared its dedication to ‘Imaginative and prescient–2050’, a long-term plan for nationwide growth. This could place its analysis intensive universities to guide the nation with data and experience within the long-term. However to make it a actuality, the federal government must enact constant coverage and laws, grant autonomy to state universities, unite the state universities and Academy of Sciences and allocate satisfactory funding to R&D.

To this finish, the Asian Growth Financial institution’s proposed venture, the Analysis College Growth Mission in Mongolia, is anticipated to construct the analysis capability of the nation. The venture will strengthen collaboration between six key state-owned universities, public analysis institutes and business. Enhancing interdisciplinary graduate schooling and analysis, know-how switch and commercialisation will function the inspiration for growing analysis universities. Hopefully it will domesticate extra extremely expert staff and elevate the analysis capability in Mongolia.

Orkhon Gantogtokh is a PhD scholar and fellow of the Institute of Asian Analysis on the College of British Columbia.