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Formation, Expansion, and Composition of the Field
Mongolia is a landlocked country in central Asia and has a population of 3 million.
The first higher education institution (HEI) in the country, the National University
of Mongolia (NUM), was established in 1942 with three faculties: physics and
mathematics, veterinary medicine, and medicine. Since then, the development of
HEIs has increased, and the faculties of agriculture and medicine have been sepa-
rated from the NUM and have become independent institutes (Batbaatar and
Lkhagvasuren 2012 ; Mongolian State University of Life Science [MSULS] 2015 ).
As Mongolia transitioned from a centralized socialist economy to a market econ-
omy in the early 1990s, the demand for higher skills in the labor market has increased
and has led to a marked expansion of HEIs (World Bank [WB] 2010 ). Since 1990
the number of HEIs increased significantly, initially it was eight in 1990, peaking at
185 in 2002, and then decreased to 101 HEIs; concurrently, the number of enrolled
students rose from 17,338 in 1990 to 178,295 in 2014 (Ministry of Education,
Culture and Science [MECS] 2015) (Fig. 12.1).
This increase is not surprising, given that people aged 20–24 years represented
the largest group in the population (in 2013); the demand for whom, particularly
those who have completed high school, is also the highest. Some of this high
demand was met by foreign HEIs during the socialist era; thousands of Mongolian
students studied in the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, such
as Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. However, since the tran-
sition, a comparatively low number of students have studied aboard, for example, in
Germany and in Asian countries, such as China, Korea, Japan, and Singapore, due
to a significant reduction in the state grant and in people’s capacity to pay the tuition
fees for foreign education. As a result, the expansion of higher education in Mongolia
was largely centralized in the capital, because almost all HEIs are situated in
Ulaanbaatar, and a significant part of it was expansion of private HEIs (WB 2010 ).
Fig. 12.1 Number of students in higher education institutions in Mongolia (Source: Ministry of
Education, Culture, and Science, 2015; http://www.meds.gov.mn/highereducation))
N. Sumberzul and S. Oyunbileg