© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 213
J. Jung et al. (eds.), Researching Higher Education in Asia, Higher Education in
Asia: Quality, Excellence and Governance, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4989-7_12
Chapter 12
Higher Education Research in Mongolia
During the Transition Period of Development
Nyamjav Sumberzul and Shagdarsuren Oyunbileg
Abstract The first higher education institution (HEI) in Mongolia was established
in 1942. During the transition period from a centralized economy to a market econ-
omy, which began in the early 1990s, there was a marked increase in the number of
HEIs. Mining, construction, transport, and communication have become the fastest-
growing sectors; they have potential absorptive capacity for the younger population
and demand technical, vocational, and engineering skills. The changing socioeco-
nomic context has introduced progress and innovation in higher education; how-
ever, we have also faced some emerging problems and challenges. This has
stimulated increased demand for higher educational research, and we here outline
the current landscape of higher education as a research field in Mongolia on the
basis of the quantity and themes of published journal articles and monographs.
We reviewed the Mongolian Foundation for Science and Technology (MFST)
database, which was established in 1993, as well as some academic journals that
publish peer-reviewed, research-based, discipline-specific articles. The journals do
not focus specifically on higher education, but they occasionally include articles
related to higher education research. State-owned universities play a key role in
such research; therefore, the summary of annual academic publications by faculty
members and researchers of those universities is a reasonable source of information
to find relevant articles. We reviewed 380 publications, most of which were related
to common problems of higher education in Mongolia, such as educational policy,
capacity building, faculty development, etc. In their conclusions and recommenda-
tions, the authors of the studies primarily stated that education management and
human resource development, training methods, and content must be improved.
We concluded that higher education research is in its initial stage of develop-
ment and that its role as a field of science, in planning for future actions, in evalu-
ating the results and outcomes of interventions and changes in higher education,
and in providing policy developers and decision-makers with scientific evidence,
is increasing.
N. Sumberzul (*) • S. Oyunbileg
Mongolian National University of Medical Sciences, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
e-mail: [email protected]