52925 TERTIARY EDUCATION IN MONGOLIA: Meeting the Challenges of the Global Economy POLICY NOTE September 2010 Human Development Sector Unit Mongolia Country Management Office East Asia and Pacific Region Document of the World Bank REPORT NO. 52925 - MN Tertiary Education in Mongolia: Meeting the Challenges of the Global Economy POLICY NOTE September 2010 Human Development Sector Unit Mongolia Country Management Office East Asia and Pacific Region Document of the World Bank CURRENCY EQUIVALENTS Currency US$1.00 = MNT 1,168.20 (2007) US$1.00 = MNT 1,171.36 (2008) US$1.00 = MNT 1,358.19 (2009) FISCAL YEAR January 1- December 31 WEIGHTS AND MEASURES Metric System ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ECDE Early Childhood Development and Education MSUE Mongolian State University of Education EGSPRS Economic Growth Support and Poverty Reduction Strategy MUST Mongolia University of Science and Technology ESMP2 Education Sector Master Plan 2 NER Net Enrolment Ratio GER Gross Enrolment Ratio NQF National Qualification Framework GDP Gross Domestic Product NUM National University of Mongolia HSU Health Sciences University of Mongolia NVETMC National Vocational Education and Training Methodology Center LSMS Living Standards Measurement Survey OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development M&E Monitoring and Evaluation QA Quality Assurance MECS Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science STF State Training Fund MNCEA Mongolian National Council for Educational Accreditation TEI Tertiary Education Institution MOF Ministry of Finance TVE Technical and Vocational Education MSUA Mongolian State University of Agriculture Country Director: Klaus Rohland Sector Director: Emmanuel Jimenez Sector Manager: Eduardo Velez Bustillo Task Team Leader: Kin Bing Wu CONTENTS Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v 1. Challenges to Post-basic Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1. Educational Development since the Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2. Key Policy Questions Surrounding Tertiary Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2. The Demand for Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.1 Rising Wage Premia for Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2. Prospects for Job Growth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.3. Migrant workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2.4. Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 3. The Impact of Governance and Financing on Quality and Equity of Tertiary Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 3.1. Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 3.2. Accreditation and Quality Assurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 3.3. Finance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 3.4. Tuition Fees and Student Financial Assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 3.5. Strategies of the Updated Education Sector Master Plan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 4. Policy Options to Reform Tertiary Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 4.1. Differentiate Roles of TEIs and Improve System Articulation to Facilitate Lifelong Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 4.2. Concentrate Resources to Fund Premier Universities through Competitive Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 4.3. Higher Education Commission and Quality Assurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 4.4. Public Accountability and Consumer Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 4.5. Better Targeting of Financial Aid and Improvement of Basic Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 5. Technical and Vocational Education and Training: An Alternative to Tertiary Education? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 5.1. The Structure and Outcomes of Mongolia’s TVET system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 5.2. Challenges to the Quality of Mongolia’s TVET System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 5.3. Options to Improve Quality and Relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 6. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE i LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Growth of the Tertiary Education Sector, 1991-2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Table 2: Tertiary Graduates per 10,000 Population . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Table 3: Gross Enrollment Rates by Level, 1991, 1995, 2000 and 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Table 4: Wage Premia of Various Levels of Education, 1998 and 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Table 5: Wage Premia for Different Levels of Educational Attainment, 1998 and 2007 by Age Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Table 6: Distribution of Wage Employees by Sector, 1998, 2002, and 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Table 7: Public Expenditure on Education, 1991, 2002 and 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Table 8: Sources of Funding of Tertiary Education Institutions, 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Table 9: International Comparison of Per Student Spending By Level of Education (US Dollars) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Table 10: State Training Fund Recipients by Program Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Table 11: A Cross Country Comparison of Tuition Fees as Percentage of per capital Gross National Income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Table 12: State Training Fund Allocation of Resources, 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Table 13: Proportion of College Costs Covered by Tuition/Financial Aid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Table 14: Tripartite System of Tertiary Education in Selected OECD Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Table 15: Ranking of the World�s Top Universities, 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Table 16: Spatial and Income Disparities in Educational Completion Rates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Table 17: Basic Outcomes of TVET in Mongolia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Enrollment Ratio by Age, 1998 and 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Figure 2: Age Earning Profiles of Workers between 25 and 55, 1998 and 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Figure 3: Characteristics of World Class Universities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Figure 4 : The Widening of STF Eligibility Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 ii MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE LIST OF BOXES Box 1: California’s System of Universities and Community Colleges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Box 2: Competitive Funding as an Innovative Financing Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Box 3: New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Box 4: How Singapore is proposing to deal with the proliferation of private tertiary education institution to assure quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Box 5: Labor Market Observatories in Italy and Chile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Box 6: Singapore’s Institute of Technical Education (ITE) Curriculum Development Model . . . . 43 Box 7: Denmark’s TVET Teachers’ Qualification and Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Box 8: The Australian Qualification Framework (AQF) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 LIST OF ANNEXES Annex 1: Mongolia’s Educational Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Annex 2: Years of Schooling of the Younger and Older Adult Population . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Annex 3: Tertiary Premia by Year, Age Group, Gender and Sector of Employment . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Annex 4: Aggregate Institutional and Enrollment Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Annex 5: Enrolment Data, by Degree Level and Type of Institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Annex 6: Enrolment by Subject and Degree Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Annex 7: Students Supported by Financial Assistance, by Degree Level and Institutional Type 68 Annex 8: Faculty Qualifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Annex 9: Recent Research Excellence Initiatives Worldwide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The preparation of this policy note was led by Kin Bing Wu (Lead Education Specialist, EASHD). Prateek Tandon (Economist, EASHD) wrote the sections on tertiary education development, finance, and accreditation. Fook Yen Chong (Consultant) assessed the system of technical and vocational education and training. Chris Sakellariou (Consultant) analyzed the Living Standard Measurement Surveys to obtain trends of the labor market, and Roberta Bassett provided useful information on New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission. Ms. Tungalag Chuluun (Human Development Operations Officer) provided helpful advice on the substance and also provided quality assurance on the translation of this policy note into the Mongolian language. The policy note benefited from discussion on South Gobi development with Arshad Sayed (Country Manager, Mongolia, EACMF) and James Reichert (Senior Operations Officer, EASCS). The Team is grateful to the Minister of Education for framing the policy questions for tertiary education reform and for guiding the team in the direction of its research. We thank Mongolian officials and academics for sharing their insight and information on the country’s higher education system, particularly Mr. M. Baasanjav, Director of Tertiary Education Department, Mr. R. Bat-Erdene (Director of the Monitoring and Evaluation Department and former Director of the Tertiary Education Department); Ms. D. Khishigbuyan (Director of the Rural Education and Development Project PMU); Mr. O. Gankhuyag (Deputy Director, EFA-FTI); Mr. A. Tsolmon (Officer in the Monitoring and Evaluation Department); Mr. D. Bayar (Officer in the Tertiary Education Department); Mr. Ts. Erdentsetseg (Officer in the Education Evaluation Center); and Ms. D. Chuluuntsetseg (Senior Officer for External Relations and Program Accreditation of the National Accreditation Center) for their helpful advice and guidance. Byambatsogt Jugder (Consultant) shared with us his knowledge and insight, including the direction of revision of the Master Plan. We are also grateful to representatives from Ivanhoe Mines, LLC and the Mongolia Employers Federation for sharing their perspectives on the education and training system in the country. Peer reviewers for this note are Jamil Salmi (Lead Education Specialist, HDNED) and William Experton (Lead Education Specialist, AFTH2). iv MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Since the transition from a planned economy to a market-based democracy in the early 1990s, Mongolian higher education has experienced a marked expansion. Between 1992 and 2007, the number of tertiary education institution (TEIs) has increased more than four-fold and enrollment more than six-fold, with the gross enrollment ratio growing from 14 to 47 percent. This rapid growth has been fueled by the increased demand for higher skills in the labor market and has led to rising education premia. These trends, in turn, have stimulated increased household demand for tertiary education. In the early 1990s, the liberalization of the economy and the legalization of private higher education made it possible to increase the supply of tertiary education. However, this expansion in supply has been met with the charging of tuition fees in public universities and the growth of private institutions. As a result, public expenditure on higher education has been contained to about 14 percent of total expenditure, compared with over 20 percent in China. Although this policy has met the need for an increased supply of tertiary education, it has failed to produce graduates who can improve Mongolia’s international competitiveness. The emerging problems are low-cost and low-quality education, a mismatch between the demand for and supply of skills, and inequitable opportunities of access between the urban and rural areas and between the rich and the poor. The policy has triggered a downward spiral: • Per student public expenditure on tertiary education is about $339, low by international standards. In contrast, the average per student public expenditure on tertiary education in OECD is $11,512. Insufficient public funding and the proliferation of small private institutions have driven TEIs to rely on the mass admission of fee paying students for financial sustainability. • As a result, TEIs have few resources to attract highly qualified persons into teaching, improve teaching and learning facilities, or upgrade the qualification and skills of faculty members. A full professor’s salary in a public TEI is about $300 a month, with little distinction from that of a school teacher. The salary of professors in private institutions varies more, but is generally not much higher. Only 23 percent of faculty members in public institutions and 15 percent in private institutions have PhDs, reflecting the non-research nature of higher education. There are few incentives or resources for professional development or upgrading. • Moreover, there is a mismatch between the fields of study demanded by the labor market and the fields of study chosen by those enrolled. Most private TEIs offer social science and business studies because of lower delivery costs. But the labor market demand is in science and technology, which accounts for only 23 percent of the total enrollment. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE v • As tertiary education enrollment grows more quickly than the number of available jobs, ill prepared graduates face grim employment prospects. Only about 36 percent of university graduates have been able to find a job, compared with 60 percent of graduates from technical and vocational education. The majority of those who find a job come from public universities. • Yet, as tertiary education premium remains high, urban parents who can afford to pay continue to send their children to pursue tertiary education. About 70 percent of students are from urban areas, although only half of the population live in the urban areas. Tuition fees in public and private TEIs, however, are high and average around $300 per year with variation across institutions. • These fees contribute to households’ indebtedness. About 67 percent of the personal loans taken by herders are spent on tertiary education. • This indebtedness is partly a lack of publicly available information on the quality of education offered by each institution and about the employment prospects of the graduates from different disciplines. Hence, the consumers of education (i.e. parents and youths) are not making informed choices. There is thus an urgent need to reform the tertiary education subsector. This policy note calls for several actions to improve quality and the equity of access. Enhancing the quality of tertiary education is essential to improving Mongolia’s international competitiveness. To do so requires making strategic choices, improving governance, and increasing investments in tertiary education. The following steps should be considered: • Rationalize TEIs in order to concentrate resources on fewer, premier institutions and programs to help them reach international standards; • Use competitive funding to allocate resources (such as equipment and staff training) to the best programs (as measured by key performance indicators and labor market outcomes) on a tri-annual basis to allow for predictability of funding and to give time to demonstrate outcomes; • Invigorate the existing accreditation and quality assurance mechanisms, using international benchmarks, to facilitate rationalization of public and private institutions and to allow for good quality offshore programs to compete in Mongolia; • Develop a diversified but integrated tertiary education system so that each institution can play a key role in regional development and transfers between institutions can be made; and • Establish a Tertiary Education Commission comprising representatives from industry, key professions, and academics from developed countries to set strategic direction, improve governance, allocate block grants, and oversee the role of TEIs in facilitating regional development. vi MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE To improve the equity of access and to provide greater consumer protection, the following measures could be adopted: • Tighten eligibility criteria and improve the targeting of the State Training Fund to aid low-income students; • Improve the quality of basic education to ensure that the poor complete schooling so as to enhance the probability of their enrollment in higher education; and • Set up a labor market observatory to inform the public about the key performance indicators of each institution and employment statistics by discipline to facilitate school and career choice. To reduce the pressure on tertiary education and provide alternatives to youths, the development of technical and vocational education at the senior secondary level should be explored. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE vii Summary of Issues and Options Subsector Issues Recommendations Tertiary Low Cost and Low • Establish a Tertiary Education Commission comprising Education Quality: representatives from industry, key professions, and academics from developed countries to set strategic direction, allocate block grants, and oversee the role of TEIs in facilitating regional development • Create institutional rankings based on quality of programs, research output of faculty, and facilities available • Introduce incentive mechanisms to encourage institutions to carry out quality assurance, quality improvement, and participate in accreditation • Invest in a national system of faculty training, skills standardization and certification to allow staff to continuously advance their skills, knowledge, and qualifications • Introduce Competitive Funding to allocate resources in a more strategic manner • Introduce fee-generating short courses with selective admission for professional development and upgrading • Provide public finance in the form of scholarships to faculty members who have been admitted to overseas institutions, and support a systematic upgrading program (including attachment to industries) • Establish a monitoring and evaluation system to ensure the implementation of suggested improvements Mismatch between • Finance tracer studies to be used as a market signal to inform the Skill Supply and admissions process Demand: • Publish employment statistics by subject areas and by institutions so that new entrants can make decision as to whether and where they want to enroll • Shift students to more relevant disciplines to realign the supply of skills to the demands of the labor market Inequitable Access: • Reform the structure, capacity, targeting, and operation of the State Training Fund • Introduce a monitoring and evaluation system for the State Training Fund to track the extent to which its programs reach its targeted groups viii MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Summary of Issues and Options Subsector Issues Recommendations TVET Poor Quality of • Work with industries to obtain donated of equipment Infrastructure and • Channel resources into the updating of equipment Equipment: • Create practical training workshops on infrastructure rehabilitation Fragmented • Create a new TVET agency, absorbing the National Vocational Governance: Education Training and Methodology Center, to support vocational standards, curriculum development, certification procedures, teacher training, school management and training facilities Lack of Opportunities • New TVET agency to specify minimum teachers’ qualification for Faculty Skill • Existing teachers to attend in-service training on pedagogy and Upgrading: industrial attachments with industry partners • Newly recruited teachers to receive pre-service training for both pedagogy as well as technical skills Limited Collaboration • Increased participation by employers and unions in reviewing with Industry: training courses, setting occupational standards, offering on-the- job training and developing bridge programs between school and work, such as apprenticeships and internships Inefficient Financing: • Encourage public-private partnerships and private investment • Review funding of stipends to students so that more funding is channeled to those attending courses that have strong demand from employers MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE ix 1. CHALLENGES TO POST-BASIC EDUCATION 1.1. EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT SINCE THE TRANSITION Universities educate future leaders and develop the high-level technical and managerial capacities that underpin economic growth. Specifically, they perform three critical roles – teaching, service to the community, and research and development. In an age of rapid technological change and globalization, the role played by institutions of higher learning is indispensible: they facilitate regional development and are an integral mechanism of national development. Recognizing the importance of tertiary education’s contribution to development, Mongolia has rightly prioritized reform of its tertiary education system as a key aspect of its efforts to achieve economic growth and employment-based poverty reduction. 1.1.1. Tertiary Education Mongolia’s rapid expansion of its tertiary education system has been a key element in its successful transition from a planned to a market-based economy, which grew at an annual average of 9 percent between 2004 and 2008.1 The gross enrollment ratio (GER) increased from 14 percent in 1991 to 47 percent in 2009 (Table 1). The total number of students rose from some 20,000 to about 150,000 during the same period. This rapid growth was stimulated by the increased demand for skills in the market economy, which has fueled the private demand for tertiary education, and was enabled by the legalization of private institutions in 1991. The increase in supply has been driven by private expansion, but state institutions continue to have a strong presence in the sub-sector. The number of tertiary education institutions (TEIs) grew from 14 to 151 in 2009, of which 72 percent is private, and has been accompanied by several positive outcomes. Mongolia’s GER in tertiary education is more than twice as high as China’s 23 percent, and closer to the OECD’s average of over 55 percent. It should be noted, however, that although 72 percent of TEIs are private, 66 percent of students still enroll in public TEIs. The student-to-teacher ratio in Mongolia is 22:1, similar to South Korea’s, although slightly lower than OECD’s average of 16:1. The availability of student financial assistance has mitigated to some extent the adverse impact on access. 1 The Government’s Economic Growth Support and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EGSPRS) has specifically called for improving the quality of and access to tertiary education services, and the Government’s Education Sector Master Plan (ESMP2) has set the twin goals of establishing a world-class university system and transforming Mongolia into a knowledge economy. With respect to tertiary education, the ESMP2 identifies three main policies: (1) to upgrade education quality and produce citizens who can function effectively in a modern knowledge economy; (2) to provide education services that can be accessed by students in all parts of the country, including rural areas, and by poor and vulnerable groups; and (3) to improve the management capacity of central and local educational institutions. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 1 Table 1: Growth of the Tertiary Education Sector, 1991-2009 % increase, 1991 2009 Share of total, 2009 1991-2009 Number of TEIs 14 151 979% 100% Public 14 42 200% 28% Private - 109 - 72% Number of Students 20,000 150,326 652% 100% Public 20,000 99,037 395% 66% Private - 50,878 - 34% Source: MECS statistics. Note: The number of institutions in 2008 was higher, but this table presents the most updated statistics. In addition to the national education system, Mongolians also have access to education overseas. During the socialist era, thousands of students attended universities in the former Soviet Union, as well as Eastern European countries such as East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Many government officials were graduates of overseas universities. After the transition, the academic connection with Russia and some newly independent states continued, while many more went to Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the USA. The vast majority of these students were self-financed, 80 percent of whom attended institutions in Singapore. In 2010, the Government of Mongolia (GoM) set up a program to fund and place Mongolian graduate students into U.S. universities through the Fulbright Program. It is clear that the formation of high level skills is not restricted to TEIs in Mongolia. Rather, it has a global reach. As a result of the rapid development of tertiary education, Mongolia compares well with other developed countries (Korea, Japan, USA and UK) and middle income countries (such as Mexico and Brazil) in terms of graduates per 10,000 population (Table 2). Table 2: Tertiary Graduates per 10,000 Population 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Mongolia 73 84 88 91 N/A Korea 127 126 126 125 125 Japan 81 82 83 84 83 USA 81 84 87 89 90 UK 101 100 105 106 107 Mexico 34 34 37 40 N/A Brazil 31 36 41 N/A 43 Source: World Bank’s EdStat database, and OECD Education at a Glance (2009). 2 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 1.1.2. Basic Education In contrast with tertiary education after the transition, pre-primary, primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education suffered a severe decline throughout the 1990s and has only recovered in recent years (Table 3). Both the supply of and demand for these subsectors have been adversely affected by the contraction of fiscal and household expenditures and by the dismantling of the collectives and social safety nets which provided these services. These trends began to reverse starting at the turn of the 21st century. Table 3: Gross Enrollment Rates by Level, 1991, 1995, 2000 and 2007 Lower Upper Pre-primary Primary Tertiary Secondary Secondary 1991 39% 97% 82% 69% 14% 1995 21% 88% 59% 21% 15% 2000 28% 99% 63% 28% 29% 2007 54% 94%* 89% 54% 47% Source: Edstats 2008 and MECS statistics. Note: the GER of 94% in 2007 is due to the lowering of the entry age in primary education from 8 to 7 in 2004-5, and from 7 to 6 in 2008-9. This entails expanding the number of school-age children which is used as a denominator for estimating the enrollment ratio. It does not mean reduced coverage. Recognizing the importance of providing more and better basic education to all school-age children on the grounds of equity and the need to deepen human capital, the GoM began an important structural reform by adding an 11th year to the primary-secondary education cycle in 2004-2005 and subsequently added a 12th year beginning in 2008-2009. The reform addresses the very short (10-year) primary-plus- secondary cycle that existed in Mongolia prior to 2004-2005. An analysis of the Living Standard Measurement Surveys (LSMS) of 1998 and 2007 found that due to improved education conditions and the lowering of school-entry age, more children have entered schools earlier and have stayed longer (Figure 1). It also shows that a larger group of youths who have completed secondary education continue on to tertiary education. The same trends are apparent for both boys and girls (Annex 4, Table A4.6). Compared to 1998, enrollment ratios disaggregated by gender were much higher in 2007; this trend is particularly pronounced for girls entering secondary school and tertiary education. There have also been impressive enrollment trends among the rural population (Annex 4, Table A4.7). While both rural and urban enrollments increased in 2007 compared to 1998, significantly more rural students have enrolled in secondary education and are staying in the system longer. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 3 Figure 1: Enrollment Ratio by Age, 1998 and 2007 Enrollment by Age, 1999 and 2007 120 100 80 Enrollment Ratio 60 1998 2007 40 20 0 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Age Source: LSMS, 1998 and 2007. Figure 1 also shows that enrollment in basic education for the 8 to 15 age group has still not reached 100 percent. Boys’, girls’, rural, and urban student enrollments start tapering off by age 14, and rural students still have the furthest to go. Overall, Mongolia’s basic education completion rate is only 77 percent, lower than other transitional economies, such as Armenia (87 percent) and Tajikistan (90 percent). These data indicate that that Mongolian education policy is facing the serious challenge of a trade-off between basic and tertiary education in the medium term and also explain the urban and rural disparity in access to tertiary education. Demographic trends show that the 20-24 age-group constitutes the largest cohort in the population in 2010, with 342,000 people, or about 13 percent of the total population (US Census Bureau projection, also see Annex 2). Therefore the social demand for tertiary education is also the highest. By 2020, this cohort is projected to decline to 283,000, thereby reducing pressure for this subsector. This shift presents an opportunity to improve quality while expanding the gross enrollment ratio for tertiary education, even if everything is held constant. At the same time, with a total fertility rate of 2.24, the number of school-aged children in the country will increase by almost 40 percent (Annex 2). The education system will need to adjust to accommodate greater numbers of students in lower levels of education in the coming decades. This policy note looks primarily at the tertiary education subsector but also reviews the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) subsector in order to assess policy options to meet the demand of the economy and the aspiration of parents and students for social mobility. 4 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 1.2. KEY POLICY QUESTIONS SURROUNDING TERTIARY EDUCATION Given the history of Mongolian tertiary education development, three factors appear to be inhibiting its ability to improve the country’s competitiveness: (i) low cost and low quality; (ii) a mismatch between the supply of and demand for skills; and (iii) inequitable access that perpetuates the wealth gap and rural-urban disparities. Low-cost and low-quality. First, this subsector has expanded with low cost and low quality. Due to underfunding, per student public expenditure on tertiary education is about $339, slightly higher than per student expenditure of $206 in primary education and $285 in secondary education. This is far below the OECD’s average of $11,520 (Table 8). Low-cost TEIs can ill afford to use high salaries to attract qualified faculty members, or invest in better learning facilities or skill upgrading for staff. A full professor’s salary in both public and private TEIs is about $300 a month, with little distinction from that of a school teacher. Insufficient funding has driven even public tertiary education institutions to rely on the mass admission of fee paying students for financial sustainability, further driving down the standards. Poor labor market outcomes and mismatch of skills. A low-cost and low-quality system that relies on mass enrollment to sustain itself predictably over-produces ill-prepared graduates with grim employment prospects. In recent years, only about 36 percent of university graduates were able to find a job (MECS 2008). This is likely due to the over-supply of poorly prepared graduates in fields with low demand. By comparison, the official employment rate for TVET graduates was 60 percent2 in 2008. Data from Mongolia’s Labor Force Survey indicate that most of those unemployed in 2002-2003 had an educational attainment of either incomplete secondary (34 percent) or completed secondary (33 percent). Data from the School-to-Work Transition Survey indicate that, among people aged 15-29, unemployment rates were lower for vocational education graduates (15 percent) than for general secondary (22 percent) and lower for those with technical diplomas (8 percent) than for a tertiary degree (12 percent). The labor market outcomes of graduates from tertiary education and TVET raises serious questions of how best to match supply with demand. Inequitable access. There are obvious disparities in enrollment between rural and urban areas, and between high and low income groups. Although post-basic education has never aimed for universal access, the inequality in opportunity is striking: 71 percent of all students in tertiary education come from urban areas, although half of the population live in rural areas. This is in large part due to lower academic achievement and lower school completion rates of rural students; the charging of tuition fees presents a prohibitive barrier for aspiration. Fees on average cost about $300 per annum. However, for herding families with multiple children, it would be very difficult to finance all children’s tertiary 2 This figure is derived from the MECS official statistical yearbook. A World Bank mission recently visited selected TVET schools in Ulaanbaatar and Selenge. All visited schools reported employment rates in excess of 80 percent, though they were unable to provide formal tracer study of their graduates. Interviewed school directors said that they surveyed their students on an informal basis. MECS’s Information, Monitoring and Evaluation Department confirmed that there is no formal survey or tracer study to collect data on TVET school leavers by TVET schools. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 5 education. About 67 percent of debts incurred by herders are spent on higher education. Even if families can borrow to pay for the direct cost of schooling, few can afford the opportunity cost of not getting their children involved in economic activities. It should be noted that student financial assistance from the State Training Fund (STF) is available to help low income students to offset their cost. However, the fund is poorly targeted and eligibility covers a number of categories, including civil servants. Thus, the fund cannot be counted on to offset the tuition fees or living expenses of a tertiary education. There is a broad consensus in Mongolia that the tertiary education system should aim to strengthen quality in order to produce the professional and technical manpower to meet the needs of the economy and improve Mongolia’s competitiveness. There is also consensus that equity of access and efficiency of the use of public resources should be improved. There are thus two sets of policy questions: • Is there an oversupply of tertiary education graduates, given low employment rates? Should there be a policy to contain the growth of enrolment? If not, what are the options to improve quality? • What options are available to meet the skill demand of the economy and aspiration for employment of parents and youths? This study will examine the following areas in order to answer the aforementioned policy questions and assess the policy options for both tertiary education and TVET: • Demand for skills: What is the wage premium of the 25-34 age group, compared with the older age group of 35-55? What are the implications for the demand for skills and, hence, for the policy towards tertiary education and technical and vocational education and training? • The impact of governance and finance of tertiary education on quality and equity: How is tertiary education governed? How has the proliferation of tertiary education institutions affected the financing of public and private tertiary education, and how have these financing trends affected equity and quality? Is the existing system of accreditation adequate to assure quality? • Policy Options for Reform: What should be done to break the vicious cycle of low-cost and low quality education from the perspective of governance and finance and to protect the consumer? • TVET as alternative to tertiary education: How feasible is it to channel more students from tertiary education to TVET? What are the key challenges in TVET? And what needs to be done to address them? 6 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 2. THE DEMAND FOR SKILLS Since the opening of the economy in the early 1990s, Mongolia has experienced a surge in the demand for skills. This is the underlying factor for the growth in demand for tertiary education. Better understanding of the demand for skills would help steer education policy with respect to which subsector and which discipline to invest in, and what kind of trade off needs to be made. 2.1. RISING WAGE PREMIA FOR SKILLS An analysis of the Living Standard Measurement Surveys (LSMS) undertaken by the World Bank, found that wages have undoubtedly risen and, predictably older workers had higher wages between 1998 and 2007 (Figure 2). Figure 2: Age Earning Profiles of Workers between 25 and 55, 1998 and 2007 (Hourly Wage) 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 Hwage-1998 Hwage-2007 400 200 0 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 Source: LSMS, 1998 and 2007. Wage earners with a university education command the highest wage premia compared with both workers with no education and workers with other levels of education. Table 4 shows the following trends between 1998 and 2007: MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 7 • A reduced wage premia of junior secondary education over that of primary education (-0.231); • An increase in the wage premia of high school vocational education over that of primary education (0.349) is higher than that of general high school education (0.093), signaling the increasing demand for vocational skills among high school graduates; • An increase in the wage premia of university educated graduates (0.408) over that period, whose magnitude is only second to graduates of vocational high schools; and • An increase in the wage premia of tertiary diploma (mostly awarded to tertiary level TVET graduates) (0.639) which is the highest among all adult workers. Table 4: Wage Premia of Various Levels of Education, 1998 and 2007 Change 1998 2007 1998-2007 Primary -0.250 0.116 0.366 Junior Sec./primary 0.521 0.290* -0.231 Senior Sec./ primary 0.603 0.786* 0.183 General high school/primary 0.650 0.743* 0.093 Vocational high school/primary 0.525 0.874* 0.349 Tertiary Diploma/primary 0.667* 1.306* 0.639 University/primary 0.979* 1.387* 0.408 *Statistical significant except for primary. Source: Sakellariou, 2009. Industry and Skill Premia in Asia. Background Paper for the World Bank’s Regional Study on Skills. Preliminary Draft. These data signal growing demand for higher levels of skills, particularly those developed by technical and vocational education. The rising wage premia for higher levels of skills are not inconsistent with low employment rates among tertiary education graduates. It merely indicates that the labor market sorts well trained graduates with the right skills from those who do not. Further analysis of the wage premia found a distinctive pattern between the younger and the older age groups, between men and women, and between the public and private sector of employment (Table 5 and Annex3): • First, males between the 25-34 age group, who have had tertiary education appeared to enjoy greater growth in the wage premium between 1998 and 2007, a testimony to why there is a strong household demand for tertiary education. 8 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE • The wage growth between 1998 and 2007 was much less for tertiary educated women (by a factor of nearly 10), but their wage premium was much higher than that for men in 1998 (1.22 vs. 0.68) (Annex3, Tables A1 and 2). • Furthermore, the wage was higher for those employed in the private sector during each period of observation. • For older workers, those aged 35 and 55, men had a higher wage premium than women, but wage growth was higher for women. • Those who worked in the public sector had higher growth in their wage premium than the private sector. Table 5: Wage Premia for Different Levels of Educational Attainment, 1998 and 2007 by Age Group Education Premiums Change (%) 1998 2007 (vs. No Education): (1998-07) 25-34 Age Group Primary (dropped) -0.304 - Lower Secondary 0.515 -0.082 Secondary General completed 0.392 0.458* 16.84 Secondary Vocational 0.376 0.679*** 80.6 Tertiary Diploma 0.531 1.01*** 90.2 University 0.827 1.18*** 42.7 R-sq adjusted 0.025 0.180 N 384 2,549 35-55 Age Group Primary 0.839 0.172 -79.5 Lower Secondary 1.34** 0.554*** -58.7 Secondary General completed 1.63*** 0.976*** -40.1 Secondary Vocational 1.45** 1.15*** -20.7 Tertiary Diploma 1.61*** 1.64** 1.8 University 1.94*** 1.69*** -12.9 R-sq adjusted 0.100 0.157 N 702 4,739 Note: Based on a Mincerian regression with basic controls. Percentage changes were not calculated when premiums for both years were statistically insignificant. Source: LSMS, 1998 and 2007. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 9 2.2. PROSPECTS FOR JOB GROWTH In which sectors did job growth occur? Data from the LSMS show that mining is the fastest-growing sector: employment increased by 671 percent for the 25-34 age groups between 1998 and 2007 (Table 6). Mining also attracts a greater number of younger workers than older ones as reflected in the lower growth of 295 percent among the 35-55 age groups (Table 6). Construction is the sector with the second fastest growth rate between 1998 and 2007 for the 25-34 age group (368 percent), while transport and communication came third (110 percent). This suggests that the labor market has potential absorptive capacity for the younger population and demand for technical, vocational, and engineering skills. Table 6: Distribution of Wage Employees by Sector, 1998, 2002, and 2007 Change (%) Industry 1998 (%) 2007 (%) (1998-07) 25-34 Age Group (n=383) (n=2,579) Agriculture 4.18 1.86 -55.5 Mining 0.78 6.01 670.5 Manufacturing 4.69 9.93 111.7 Utilities 3.39 3.44 1.5 Construction 2.08 9.74 368.3 Trade 9.89 11.02 11.4 Transport/Commun. 6.77 14.19 109.6 Public admin. 25.52 9.55 -62.6 Services 42.56 34.25 -19.5 35-55 Age Group (n=700) (n=4,780) Agriculture 6.43 3.28 -49.0 Mining 1.28 5.06 295.3 Manufacturing 4.70 9.50 102.1 Utilities 3.85 5.84 51.7 Construction 3.56 8.37 135.1 Trade 5.13 7.85 53.0 Transport/Commun. 7.26 10.66 46.8 Public admin. 22.36 10.91 -51.2 Services 45.29 38.52 -14.9 Source: LSMS, 1998 and 2007. This labor market snapshot is corroborated by the rising importance of these sectors in the economy. Mongolia is well endowed with mineral deposits, including copper, coal, gold, and uranium. Revenue from the mining sector, for example, contributed nearly 45 percent of the 2008 state budget and accounted for nearly 28 percent of GDP. The Erdenet mining company alone accounted for 12 percent of the country’s GDP in 2008. The transportation and communications sectors accounted for nearly 13 percent of GDP. 10 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE These trends are likely to continue in the future. Because of Mongolia’s mineral wealth, many investors have shown great interest in the high growth potential in South Gobi, where there is a huge deposit of coal, gold, and copper. As the World Bank’s Southern Infrastructure Strategy for Mongolia points out, the need for skilled mining and construction workers will be very large in the region and is expected to require at least 7,000 additional workers. These workers would be involved in various infrastructure development projects surrounding the mines such as township development, road construction, mine equipment operations and maintenance, and railway construction. Besides the increased quantity of imported labor expected to be brought in to the region, training facilities will need to be established to help locals benefit from new mining-related jobs, help upgrade locals’ skills, and ensure a supply of suitably skilled labor to the mining industry. Over the medium term, mining companies are beginning to prepare for the transformation of the sector. Ivanhoe Mines Mongolia LLC, for example, expects to hire 3,000 workers in the region for its steady- state operations and about 8,000 workers during the construction phase of its mining work in the South Gobi. Energy Resources LLC also forecasts a similar jump: it aims to double the current number of workers to 800 by end of 2009 and 1,500 in three years’ time. Both companies are concerned about the inadequacy of competent (skill and knowledge) workers and wish to be actively involved in the training of mine workers through formal collaboration with MECS. Some of these companies are planning to bring in migrant workers (mostly from neighboring China) to work until Mongolian workers are available.3 Similarly, the Mongolia Employers’ Federation, a national NGO representing the interest of 8,300 businesses in Mongolia, has acknowledged the gap between the expectations of employers and the technical competencies of TVET graduates. They have argued that TVET graduates appear to have very little competence with regards to occupational health and safety or high technological skills and are currently advocating for curricular reform in the subsector. The sentiment expressed by these employers appears to be supported by data on student enrolment by discipline (Annex 5). Only 23 percent of students are enrolled in science and technology courses in 2008 (areas in demand by employers), versus over 50 percent who enrolled in the social sciences and the arts (areas with low demand). It is not surprising, then, that a skills mismatch dominates the labor market. Thus, given the potential for development, there appears to be a strong need to improve the quality of tertiary education and realign the supply of skills to the demands of the labor market. To do this entails reforming this subsector in several important ways, detailed in the following sections. 3 Interview with mining official. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 11 2.3. MIGRANTWORKERS The above description of the labor market does not include migrant workers. South Korea is the most important destination for Mongolian export workers. There are roughly 30,000 Mongolians, in addition to the domestic workforce of 1.1 million, working in South Korea. If the self-employed and herders are excluded as denominator, the wage earning jobs in South Korea may add about 6 percent to the total number of jobs. There are other jobs held by Mongolians in neighboring and far away countries, although such statistics are not available. At the same time, there are about 15,000 Chinese migrant workers in Mongolia, mostly in construction. Some of these jobs filled by Chinese workers are low wage jobs which are not attractive to Mongolians. Others are skilled jobs for which Mongolians may not be qualified. In the age of globalization, it would no longer be viable to plan for education with only the national labor market in mind. Remittances from migrant workers have increasingly become a major source of wealth and migration relieves pressure on the domestic labor market. In Bangladesh, for example, which is also a large labor-exporting country to the Middle East and Southeast Asia, remittances from migrant workers amount to 10 percent of GDP. Hence, in making policy for education, Mongolia would be well served by taking into account the demand for skills beyond its border. 2.4. CONCLUSION On the basis of the above evidence, given the potential for development, there appears to be a strong need to improve the quality of tertiary education and realign the supply of skills to the demands of the labor market. To do this entails reforming not only tertiary education but also technical and vocational education in several important ways. 12 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 3. THE IMPACT OF GOVERNANCE AND FINANCING ON QUALITY AND EQUITY OF TERTIARY Governance and financing impinge on the quality of education. A World Bank study on world-class universities finds that they have three features: (a) favorable governance; (b) abundant resources coming from public budgets, endowment, tuition fees and research grants); and (c) excellent teaching staff, research and students (Salmi, 2009). Figure 3 presents these characteristics schematically. This chapter uses the concept of world-class universities to assess which features are present in Mongolian tertiary education and what could be improved. Figure 3: Characteristics of World Class Universities Supportive Regulatory Framework Public Budget Resources Dynamic Endowment Revenues Knowledge & Autonomy Technology Academic Freedom Tuition Fees Research Grants Transfer Leadership Team Strategic Vision WCU Culture of Excellence Top Leading-Edge Graduates Research Students Teaching Staff ABUNDANT FAVORABLE Researchers RESOURCES GOVERNANCE CONCENTRATION OF TALENT Source: Adapted from Salmi (2009). 3.1. GOVERNANCE Governance encompasses the framework in which an institution pursues its goals and policies in a coherent and coordinated manner. Governance structures are extremely diverse across countries. On one side of the spectrum is the highly decentralized system in the USA with state university systems for publicly funded universities and private universities governed by their own board. On another side of the spectrum are British Commonwealth countries (UK, Australia, India, Pakistan, etc) where tertiary education is steered by the Commission on Higher Education, or the University and Polytechnic Grants Commission, which are independent from the Ministry of Education, often comprise of representatives from industry and the private sector, as well as academics from other countries, and allocate budgets based on multi-year plans generated by tertiary education institutions. On yet another side of the MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 13 spectrum lays countries whose ministries of education make policy for tertiary education. While there is no single system that is intrinsically better than others, there are elements associated with favorable governance. These are a supportive regulatory framework, institutional autonomy, academic freedom, strong leadership with strategic vision, and a culture of excellence (Salmi, 2009). 3.1.1. The Public Sector There were 42 public TEIs in Mongolia, accounting for 28 percent of total institutions, enrolling about 99,000 students, or 66 percent of total enrollment. The premium universities are in the public sector. These are the National University of Mongolia (NUM), the Mongolian University of Science and Technology (MUST), the Mongolian State University of Education (MSUE), the Health Sciences University of Mongolia (HSU) and the Mongolian State University of Agriculture (MSUA). NUM is strong on law, international studies, languages, economics, and geology. MUST’s strength is in mining and computer sciences. Newer ones such as the University of Finance has the best MBA program in the country. The plan is to consolidate the public TEIs into 16 universities. Mongolian tertiary education is administered directly by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (MECS) and regulated by the Law on Higher Education and a number of statutes. The Department of Higher Education is in charge of policy formulation. The Minister of Education has overall responsibility for tertiary education. Public universities are accountable to MECS. The Minister has an advisory council which is composed of individuals selected by the Minister himself and provides advice on a broad range of issues covering education, culture and science. Advisory council members are often from the higher education subsector. This council meets irregularly, at the Minister’s request, and does not have decision-making authority. There is no formal council or internal unit mandated for strategic planning for tertiary education. The usual practice is to form an ad hoc group, always with funding from outside (usually a development partner such as the Asian Development Bank). The ad hoc group is composed of Ministry staff and representatives from other ministries and other relevant parties. The main strategic paper such as the Master Plan for Education is submitted to the cabinet for approval or endorsement. Sometimes, development partners are invited to comment or endorse jointly (which was happened in case of the 2006 Master Plan). Operational planning is based on longer term strategic plans, and initial suggestions and proposals are collected from line departments of the Ministry and synthesized by the Department of Finance and Investment which makes final costing. After the Minister’s endorsement, the plan becomes an obligation to be implemented by officials who are indicated to be in charge. The presidents or rectors of public universities are appointed by the Minister of Education, although the Civil Service Sub-Committee led by the State Secretary of MECS is responsible for selection. Each TEI has a Board of the Directors. According to legislation (Education Law and Higher Education Law), the government sets common procedures and regulations in the form of charters and bylaws. Institutions are authorized to make some adaptation when they adopt their own institutional bylaws reflecting specifics of the institution, giving them some room to maneuver. Therefore, the internal institutional power distribution can be controlled by the President. Institutional bylaws are subject to approval of the 14 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE institutional governing board. However, in practice, board members tend to approve the president’s suggestions with no or minor change. Presidents of public institutions sign a contract indicating performance outputs annually, so the Minister can set specific conditions and targets that may streamline or limit the actions of the president. The Mongolian National Council for Education Accreditation (MNCEA) accredits new private TEIs, but its coverage remains low. In recent years, program accreditation has also been instituted. Numerous programs, especially in the fields of economics and management, engineering, have been accredited by special bodies authorized by the National Council and MECS and subject to the National Council’s formal endorsement. Faculty members are appointed by the rectors. If faculty members commit misconduct, there is a moral committee in each public institution to judge them and determine the penalty. In general, Labor Codes and other internal procedures of the higher education institutions are applied in such cases. However, if faculty members are incompetent or out-of-date in their teaching contents, there is no remedy. MECS does not get involved in the dismissal of faculty members from public universities, although in principle this is possible. 3.1.2. The Private Sector Since the passage of the 1991 Education Law that established the legal basis for private universities and institutions, it has not been difficult to obtain a license to run a private college in Mongolia. All that was required was to have adequate facilities, a faculty, a library, and financial resources. With the increasing demand for tertiary education in the country and the fact that colleges do not pay value-added or profit taxes, investing in private colleges is lucrative for many. As a consequence private institutions have grown from zero to 144 in 2007. Only about 20 percent private institutions or 29 out of 144 have been accredited. All regulatory and legislative norms apply to all TEIs regardless of their ownership. So, private institutions are also required to observe educational standards for designing and performing their academic programs, and their internal processes should comply with „typical’ regulations established by the Ministry. There is, however, one major difference between private and public TEIs. The presidents of private TEIs are appointed by the owner, or are themselves the owner. Their power is not curtailed by any external body. There is no board required for private TEIs. The expansion of higher education has not contributed to regional development as much as it should, as the vast majority of private TEIs are located in Ulaanbataar. Private TEIs are accountable to their owners who appoint the directors and staff. Private TEIs are very small, averaging 468 students per institution, closer to the size of a high school than a university. By contrast, many American and Asian universities have over 10,000 students. Many Mongolian private institutions offer only a single field of study, such as business. Private TEIs’ faculty members also have lower academic qualifications. Only 15 percent have PhDs, compared with 24 percent of public TEIs, suggesting that private TEIs are not oriented towards research. They also have many part- MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 15 time staff, who were working full time in public TEIs. Private TEIs limited course offering reduces the quality of education, as students do not receive a general education that would enable them to have broad-based knowledge, make connections across different fields, think creatively, develop the skills to learn on their own, communicate well with others, and be entrepreneurial in their future career. There is also no regular, national information about the graduation rates and employment rates of each of the public and private TEIs. Policymakers do not have the evidence to steer tertiary education with respect to the strengths and difficulties of each institution. 3.2. ACCREDITATION AND QUALITY ASSURANCE Good governance always has a built-in mechanism for quality assurance (QA) and academic excellence, as well as public accountability. Accreditation is akin to institutional peer review, in which a community of experts performs impartial review. In the age of mass tertiary education, and liberalization of service provision, educational accreditation carries an especially important role. Accreditation is an integral part of quality assurance. In this process, an external body evaluates the services and operations of an educational institution or program to determine if the required standards are met. If standards are met, accredited status is granted by the agency. In most countries, the function of educational accreditation is conducted by a government agency. In the USA, QA is independent of the government and performed by private membership associations. The Mongolian National Council for Education Accreditation (MNCEA) has been in operation since 1998. It is responsible for accrediting TEIs and TVET centers. Institutional accreditation remains voluntary. MNCEA is self-financed exclusively from the accreditation services they provide to applying institutions. The Council is chaired by the Minister and composed of rectors of universities and colleges accredited by the Council. Although it is an independent agency, since the Council is chaired by Minister, it functions very much like a part of the Ministry but funded from service fees charged to applying institutions. Since it is sustained by fee paying institutions, its financial viability is precarious. MNCEA includes the Board of the National Council, Executive Office, 6 full time officers, 13 accreditation council members for TEIs and 11 accreditation council members for TVET institutions. The Council also employs over 150 external evaluators on a part-time basis. Since its establishment the Council has accredited 91 TEIs including state-owned universities, institutes and colleges, vocational education and technical training centers and private higher education institutions. MNCEA has established a two-step process for the assurance of quality in higher education institutions, vocational and technical training centers and their educational activities. First institutions wishing to be accredited submit a self-assessment to MNCEA detailing its operational and pedagogical practices. Subsequently a team of visiting external assessors visits the institution for an on-site accreditation to interview faculty and students, review assignments, classroom practices, academic publications, and staff 16 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE academic qualifications. Assessors accredit an institution based on the major criteria for accreditation in Mongolia, namely: (i) whether an institution has a clear and publicly stated mission; (ii) whether an institution has made progress towards achieving that mission; (iii) whether an institution has established the extent to which resources of the institution are directed and organized toward achieving its stated educational objectives; and, (iv) whether an institution has demonstrated the integrity and commitment to the accomplishment of its mission. Program accreditation began in early 2000s. Now numerous programs, especially in the fields of economics, management, and engineering, are accredited by special bodies authorized by the National Council and the ministry. Program accreditation is a process subject to the National Council’s formal endorsement. All tertiary programs need to comply with standards approved by the National Standardization Council but there is no mechanism of enforcement. The criteria used for accreditation are not derived using international benchmarks. The external assessors do not include international members. Also, the accreditation work has mainly focused on new private TEIs. There is no periodic review of academic programs, new or existing, under public TEIs. Until recently, there was little quality assurance or public accountability. However, the 2003 Higher Education Law introduced a new form of audit, which can be initiated by the Ministry to examine whether an institution performs in compliance with established common criteria. The degrees and diplomas dispensed by accredited private institutions are assumed to confer recognition of the completion of an academic program of at least minimal quality. The current challenge for the Government is to strengthen the quality assurance and accreditation system in a way that can to improve its links with the labor market, begin to reference international benchmarks in developing the criteria for accreditation, and further engage with distance and overseas learning activities. It also should reexamine its system of incentives and sanctions and provide students with more and better information regarding the quality of institutions and programs. 3.3. FINANCE 3.3.1. Public Expenditure on Education Level of public spending. Currently, Mongolia spends between 6 and 7 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on education, a level of spending similar to former socialist economies and higher than the OECD’s average of 5.8 percent. This level of public spending reflects the high cost of service delivery to a population dispersed over vast territory, as well as the harsh climate. As a percentage of total government expenditures, public spending on education has been consistently above the East Asian average of 16.2 percent (see Table 7 for trends). The high spending on education reflects the value Mongolia places on education. Even during the global economic crisis in 2009, the education budget has not been cut. As the overall public expenditure shrank, the share of education increased to 30 percent of the total public expenditure. The high share of public spending on education suggests that there is not much fiscal space for a further increase, at least in the medium term. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 17 Intra-sectoral allocation. Prior to the crisis, tertiary education’s share has declined from 15 percent of the total public expenditure on education before the transition to 10 percent in 2007, while the share of vocational education declined from 10 to 6 percent over the same period (Table 7). As primary education enrollment has expanded, greater efficiency has been realized with higher student-to-teacher ratios. As more students continue on to secondary education, greater shares of resources have also been channeled to this subsector. While tertiary education absorbed only 10 percent of the country’s total public expenditure on education, it accounted for 28 percent of the total student population. Table 7: Public Expenditure on Education, 1991, 2002 and 2007 1991 2002 2007 GDP per capita (US$) (nominal) 929 1,113 1,431 Education Expenditure as Share of GDP (%) 12% 8% 6.2% Education Share of Total Public Expenditure (%) 18% 16% 17% % share of total education expenditure: Primary n/a 40% 27% Secondary n/a 26% 37% Technical & vocational n/a 5% 6% Tertiary 15% 15% 10% Per student public spending (as % of GDP p.c.) Primary 17% 17% 13% Secondary n/a 14% 18% Technical & vocational 10% 5% 6% Tertiary 10% 12% 14% Sources: Ministry of Finance (MoF) and Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (MECS) through Education Finance Study team; Edstats. A priority of the Government (expenditures in primary and secondary education make up over 50 percent of the overall education expenditures), this subsector accounts for 70 percent of all students in Mongolia. In the near term as the system expands to 12 years, this sector will require additional resources to finance the additional grade level and achieve universalization targets. In particular, while government spending on kindergarten has remained relatively consistent over the years, funding for kindergartens may become more of a priority in the coming years to encourage on-time enrollment of six year-olds to grade 1. In the medium-term, Mongolia faces hard choices. On the one hand, it has to protect spending on basic education. On the other hand, it has to ensure that the system produces well trained and flexible 18 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE professional, technical, and vocational manpower needed for economic development. Given the resource constraints, it was an equitable use of public finance for Mongolia to use cost recovery to finance higher education, thereby making available more public resources to fund basic education. In the long-term, however, as Mongolia is expecting the development of mineral resources to bring in revenue for investment in education, it will have to think through how best to use its new windfall to make its education system world class. Thus, educational strategy must plan for two potentially very different medium- and long-term scenarios. 3.3.2. Financing of Tertiary Education Diversification of funding sources. Mongolia’s tertiary education has been financed largely by private expenditure, through the payment of tuition fees, donations, and income generation (Table 8). Tuition fees are the largest source of financing for HEIs. Private TEIs receive almost 62 percent of their funding from tuition fees, and public TEIs receive almost 58 percent of their funding from these fees. The State Training Fund (STF) provides about 28 percent of funding to tertiary education through the provision of grants and loans to help offset the cost of education for about 40 percent of students in this subsector. Direct state budget support to TEIs accounts for only 5 percent of total public spending on tertiary education. Table 8: Sources of Funding of Tertiary Education Institutions, 2007 All By Type Sources of Funding TEIs State TEIs Private TEIs 1 State Budget 5.2% 7.1% 0.3% 2 State Training Fund 27.6% 27.6% 21.0% 3 Tuition Fees 54.7% 54.4% 61.4% 4 Income from Non-Core 5.8% 7.1% 1.4% Activities 5 Donations and Grants 1.7% 2.1% 2.4% 6 Programs and Projects 2.9% 0.1% 8.3% 7 Other Sources 2.1% 1.8% 5.4% Total 100% 100% 100% Source: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (MECS), 2008. The State Budget mainly finances operating costs of the public TEIs, allocated by the Department of Finance in MECS. These usually pay for utilities, such as electricity and heating; there is no state budget for goods and services or repair and maintenance. Capital investment in facilities, equipment, and laboratories is decided by the Board of Directors in each public TEI. If the TEI does not have the resources MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 19 to fund investment, the Board of Directors will present their request to MECS which consolidates the proposals from different TEIs and presents the draft to the Ministry of Finance (MoF) where major negotiations take place. Then MoF submits the proposal to the Cabinet discussion. The Cabinet submits the final draft to the Parliament. At the Parliament, all Standing Committees discuss the proposal where individual MPs can propose specific funding or investment. At this stage, lobbying for specific programs and projects takes place. Once the Parliament approves the budget with a specified itemized allocation, the Cabinet, the Minister and other authorities are charged to execute the plan. The dependency on MECS and Parliamentary approval for funding, the vulnerability to lobbying efforts, and the lack of TEI’s own endowment, reduces institutional ability to plan and act. Funding is on a short-term basis and unpredictable and undermines medium-term planning and institutional development. Salaries, which constitute roughly 60 percent of total expenditure on higher education, are funded by tuition fees.4 There is a strong incentive to expand enrollment irrespective of the capacity of the faculties to deliver and labor market outcomes. In general, faculty salaries are not that much higher than teachers’ salaries, making teaching unattractive for people with high levels of skills, particularly if they are young and well trained. Since the Parliament approves investment budget, public institutions are accountable to the government. Furthermore, as demand for tertiary education outstrips supply, there is little incentive for TEIs to be accountable to the students they serve, or to provide information about their own performance in order to facilitate the consumer of education to make informed decision about enrollment and field of study. For research, there are two types of research grants, given on a competitive basis. The first grant is given through the Mongolian Academy of Sciences to the scientists and researchers. Every year up to 16 people receive the grant for an amount of up to 4,000,000 MNT (US$3,600). They are those who carried out a high level theoretical research and those who need funding for their research work, which was approved to be applicable into practice. By comparison, the USA National Institute of Health’s annual budget ranges from US$26-30 billion, and a research grant can run into the amount of hundreds of million dollars. The second grant is received by young scientists for their outstanding research work. Every year a conference on scientific research is held and young scientists present their research work. The Commission of Young Scientists select the top ten young scientific works by each sector based on the decision of the conference on scientific research and the MECS endorses the decision to select the young scientists to receive the grant. There is no financial scheme to provide incentives to encourage efficiency, for example, the allocation of the budget by the number of students who graduate on time, the number of students who find a 4 A May 2009 World Bank mission selectively examined the categorical expenditures of six universities in Ulaanbaatar and found that these universities spent between 55 and 68 percent of their revenue on staff and teacher salaries. In several instances, expenditures on equipment and facilities were largely financed by private donations (e.g., computer laboratories in two universities were sponsored by private commercial interests). 20 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE job, or to reward publications in international peer reviewed journals. The lack of resources to fund improvement in facilities, improvement of the teaching and learning environment (laboratories, libraries, etc.), faculty upgrading, research, and conference participation has hampered the ability of Mongolian tertiary universities to deliver high quality education. According to official statistics, 25 percent of faculty members in public universities are part-time staff, seriously affecting the quality of teaching and research. Only 16 percent of faculty members in all public universities have a doctoral degree, while about 43 percent have masters’ degrees. In private universities, only 5 percent have doctoral degrees and 23 percent have master’s degrees (Annex 7). There is no predictable funding for the upgrading of qualifications for faculty members or for attending international conferences, and there is no systematic tracking of faculty members’ publication and research efforts. Unit cost. Mongolia’s per student public spending on tertiary education (including allocations from the State Budget and allocations made to the State Training Fund) is a paltry $339 per year. This amount is higher than per student expenditure of $206 in primary education and the $285 in secondary education. However, by any of these analyses, per student spending is extremely low in comparison with the OECD’s average of $11,512 and China’s $854. Spending on tertiary education per student as a multiple of spending on primary education is low, 1.6 to 1, compared with the international range of 6 to 1 to 30 to 1. Since the quality of tertiary education depends heavily on the quality of faculty members, laboratories, equipment, and libraries, which are driven by international prices, the extremely low unit cost in Mongolia suggests that its quality is far below international standards (See Table 9). Table 9: International Comparison of Per Student Spending By Level of Education (US Dollars) Junior Senior Pre-primary Primary Tertiary Secondary Secondary Mongolia (2007) N/A 206 285* 285* 339 China (2007) Budgetary 227 236 278 343 854 Budgetary, 403 300 378 378 2063 fees, others OECD Average (2005) 4,888 6,252 7,437 8,366 11,512 USA 8,301 9,156 9,899 10,969 24,370 Korea 2,426 4,691 5,661 7,765 7,606 Japan 4,174 6,744 7,630 8,164 12,336 Brazil (2005)** 1,215 1,425 2,359 899 9,994 Chile (2005)** 2,952 1,936 1,865 1,965 6,620 Source: China Educational Finance Statistical Yearbook 2007; OECD Education At a Glance, 2008. World Bank Global Development Finance Database 2007 for exchange rate $1=7.6075. Note: *Mongolia data do not disaggregate between junior and senior secondary education. **Brazil and Chile are OECD partner countries and included in the table for comparison with Latin America. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 21 3.4. TUITION FEES AND STUDENT FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE Shift in financing from public to private through fees. In 1992, the Mongolian government passed Resolution No. 107 which endorsed new regulations for post-secondary education financing. In particular, this resolution established the State Training Fund to administer and manage financial aid programs for students.5 These new financing measures governing board consists of six officials, selected for their positions by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science. No institutional or public representatives are included on the Board. drastically reduced the number and amount of government subsidies to the tertiary education subsector that had been a staple since the Soviet-era. The new legislation allowed institutions to begin charging tuition and fees up to the amount of per student variable costs, enforced tuition grants for students enrolled within the state quota, provided need-based tuition and stipend loans to students, and provided TEIs with government subsidies to cover the fixed costs of their operations. Since that time, public funds have been channeled to tertiary education institutions through the STF. As a proportion of funding, the State Budget itself provides a relatively small percentage of funds to TEIs. The STF funds themselves, however, are not well targeted to the poor. Only 39 percent of students receive funds based on needs or disadvantaged status, while 40 percent are children of civil servants (Table 10). Table 10: State Training Fund Recipients by Program Area 2003 2004 2005 Grants Number % Number % Number % Need-based Grants 8,119 23.3 13,294 33.5 13,831 33.5 Disadvantaged Group 2,216 6.4 2,454 6.2 2,149 5.2 Grant Merit-based Grants 153 0.4 149 0.3 126 0.3 Public Employee Family Grant 15,915 45.7 16,335 41.2 16,428 39.8 Loan 8,409 24.2 7,390 18.6 8,696 21 Total 34,812 100 39,622 100 41,230 100 Source: Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, 2007. 5 The State Training Fund is a semi-governmental agency which is governed by an independent board but is operationally attached to MECS. It is responsible for the implementation of all state financial aid programs. Its 22 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Tuition fees have constituted a barrier to aspiration for higher education for the poor, if not a barrier to entry. Mongolian bachelor’s degree students pay an average of 383,000 tugriks (US$270) per academic year, which is roughly 16 percent of the Gross National Income per capita. This is higher than most OECD countries, on par with South Korea, and lower than Chile’s (see Table 11 for international comparison). The fee levels in private TEIs are similar. When living expenses are included, an average student would have to spend over 150,000 additional tugriks (over US$120) per year. The policy of cost recovery is cushioned, to some extent, by the availability of grants and loans to students through the State Training Fund (STF). On average, a recipient student would receive assistance in the amount of 80 percent of tuition. Table 11: A Cross Country Comparison of Tuition Fees as Percentage of per capital Gross National Income Country Public Universities Private Universities Mongolia 16% 16% Australia 11.3% 21.9% Canada 10.0% n/a Japan 11.8% 18.5% Korea 16.3% 31.1% New Zealand 6.5% n/a United Kingdom 5.2% 4.9% United States 11.4% 42.0% Italy 3.3% 11.5% Netherlands 4.4% 4.4% Israel 12.0% 29.2% Chile 27.9% 32.0% Sources: Provided by Salmi, drawn from OECD Education at a Glance 2007; Background Report; World Bank World Economic Indicators. Expansion of eligibility criteria. Since its inception the mandate and the operations of the STF have changed several times.6 The mandate of the STF stems from the country’s Constitutional rights to 6 In 1995, new and detailed regulations were issued for financial aid for students that specified the criteria for eligibility, the conditions for the repayment of grants and loans, and the establishment of a satellite program to provide financial assistance to students from the families of public employees. Other legislation at the time reduced the coverage of grants to needy students only and abolished the state quota system. State financial aid was also extended to Master’s and Doctoral students, those pursuing graduate degrees abroad, and outstanding high school graduates and college students with a GPA of no less than 3.8 for four consecutive semesters. In 2000 tuition grants were extended to nomadic families with less than 700 heads of livestock on the basis of one child per family and also to a maximum of one student per family in which three or more children were enrolled in TEIs (Box 1, below). MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 23 education: the STF aims to provide financial support to low income, academically able students in order to provide them the opportunity to pursue tertiary education, regardless of their ability to pay. Annually, about 20,000 students apply for university admission, but under current resource constraints, the STF funds on average only about 6,000 – 7,000 students per year. Need-based loans. Loans represent the third largest financial aid program in terms of the number of students covered, as well as in the percentage of allocation of the STF resources. Students who receive loans must repay them within ten years. They have a grace period of six years after their graduation. After the seventh year, the STF raises the interest rate on the loan to 0.5 percent above the average annual bank rate for commercial loans. Loans can be forgiven if recipients have been employed for eight consecutive years, including five years in a rural county. In 2004, the government universally forgave all outstanding loans. Non-need and non-merit based grants. Grants represent the largest of the STF’s financial aid program. Children of public sector workers can receive both grants and loans. Further, the tuition grant is for only one student pursuing an undergraduate degree for the total duration of the parent’s employment in the public sector. Grants are made on a semester basis and are renewable if the recipient maintains full-time enrolment and maintains a GPA of at least 2.0 and the parent remains employed by the government. The widening of the eligibility criteria in 2000 with the passage of Government Resolution 201 has extended coverage to the children of civil servants (Figure 4). In 2007, over 17,000 students, or over 40 percent of all recipients of the STF were children of civil servants (Table 12). Although the poor are more likely to receive government tuition aid for tertiary education, approximately 54 percent of beneficiaries are non-poor. 7 Figure 4 : The Widening of STF Eligibility Criteria 1993-1995 1996-1999 2000+ • Stipends for needy, talented and foreign • Tuition loans for • Loans for poor students and students and tuition very poor students disadvantaged families fee to students who and disadvantaged families • Grants to orphans, disabled and studied by state disadvantaged students contract • Small number of grants to orphans/ • Grants for one child of civil servants disabled students and • Grants to herders, low income MA/PhD students in students and families with 3+ developed countries children • Scholarships to able students 7 Since 2000 the number of higher income students receiving assistance has grown by 36 percent, from 13,487 to 18,402 (Interview with STF official). Higher income students are defined as those who would not be eligible for a grant from the STF based on their family income level. 24 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Table 12: State Training Fund Allocation of Resources, 2007 No. of Students Average Amount per Year Resources as % of STF Covered (USD) Funding STF Grant Program 17,053 222.16 39.0% STF Loan Program 8,007 232.25 19.2% State Employee Children’s 6,442 246.17 16.3% Fund Grant State Employee Children’s 11,198 221.13 25.5% Fund Loan Source: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (MECS), 2008. Consequences of widening eligibility. Given the constraints on the STF budget, the provision of assistance to non-poor students may mean that some poor students will be displaced. It is likely that this situation is already occurring: as shown in Table 3, there are significant spatial and income disparities in completion rates of tertiary education, particularly for those living in rural areas and those in the poorest income quintile. It is unlikely that students of civil servants, one of the fastest growing groups, would meet the criteria of being both poor and meritorious. The MECS annual budget to the STF strives to give financial assistance to 60 percent of enrolled students. This percentage was based on a student survey that solicited opinion from students as to their level of interest in a financial assistance scheme. MECS does not, however, indicate the extent to which the scheme is reaching its target group or the proportion of needy students that are denied access to financial assistance because places within the scheme are limited. Further, as indicated in Table 13, there is a significant shortfall between the average level of assistance provided under the financial assistance scheme in 2007 and the average cost of public tertiary education (including living expenses). Since STF funds do not cover living expenses, aid recipients who enroll in an institution must cover this difference out of pocket, which can be significantly costly to many. This gap is even higher for students at high cost public and private institutions. Based on data from MECS, tuition represented approximately 13 to 36 percent of yearly costs of attending a college depending on whether the student lived with his or her family or not. Table 13: Proportion of College Costs Covered by Tuition/Financial Aid For those living with For those living in For those living in private parents dormitories (rented) housing Living expenses for an 832,000 1,262,000 2,342,000 academic year, Tugrik Tuition 300,000 300,000 300,000 Percent of tuition 36.1 23.7 12.8 Note: Based on Altantsetseg, 2002, World Bank, 2008. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 25 3.5. STRATEGIES OF THE UPDATED EDUCATION SECTOR MASTER PLAN The updated Education Sector Master Plan (2010) recognizes many of the issues identified in this policy note. Its strategies to improve quality and equity of this subsector and matching of supply with demand are as follows: • By 2017, increase enrolment in engineering, technology, natural sciences, education and agriculture from 32 percent to 41 percent of total enrolment, whilst reducing enrolment in humanities, law and medical sciences from 30 percent to 29 percent. • Provide tuition loans from State Training Fund for 3 out of every 5 students majoring in engineering, technology, natural sciences, education and agriculture, and for 2 out of every 5 students majoring in other subjects, and introduce merit scholarship and set an optimal ratio between tuition loans, grants, and scholarship. • Provide funding of $25, 000 each for NUM, MUST, MSUE, HSU, MSUA, for purchasing textbooks, training manuals and other publications in foreign languages. • Register national universities to inter-library network, and ensure that university teachers, students and researchers have free access to inter-library network. • Provide foreign grant and support on in-service training for university teachers. • Develop the capacity of university teachers, through professional development and joint program with international universities, and provide support to those working in rural areas • Set up a quality assurance system for higher education institutions. • Set international standards for premier universities. • Undertake a comprehensive review of the financing and governance of higher education institutions in Mongolia, aimed at course rationalization. • Undertake a comprehensive review of higher education provision in Mongolia aimed at course rationalization and national course and institutional accreditation standards. In addition, in 2010, the Parliament has approved the consolidation of some 42 public TEIs into 6, mostly through merger. There is a clear signal about the seriousness of reforming higher education. To improve quality and relevance of higher education, it is necessary to undertake major structural changes which will be described in Chapter 4. 26 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 4. POLICY OPTIONS TO REFORM TERTIARY EDUCATION International experience suggests that a highly educated population will generate its own dynamic for development. Better educated people are more adaptable to technological change, can learn new skills faster, and are better prepared to generate income for themselves through creative work and entrepreneurship. They are also more internationally mobile and more resourceful in exploring income generating opportunities beyond national borders. In the globalized economy, it is impossible to predict change. A manpower planning model that matches enrollment with job projection is unlikely to improve the skills needed for the future. Higher education policy should look beyond the medium-term demand of the national labor market and the formal wage sector. While there should not be a policy to contain enrollment growth, there must be effective mechanisms in place to ensure quality and equity, and to provide incentives to develop a culture of excellence in TEIs. This chapter offers four measures to improve quality and a measure to improve equity, in addition to the strategies outlined in the updated Education Sector Master Plan of 2010. 4.1. DIFFERENTIATE ROLES OF TEIS AND IMPROVE SYSTEM ARTICULATION TO FACILITATE LIFELONG LEARNING Given the diversity of TEIs in Mongolia and the strong social demand for higher education, there is an urgent need to differentiate the missions and pools of students for different tiers of its public and private TEIs. Even in OECD countries, only a handful of universities achieve the kind of concentration of top researchers, professors, students, facilities, and resources to attain world class status (Table 14). In the USA, only about 30 out of 5,000 TEIs are research universities. However, second tier universities and/or community colleges have different but equally important functions, which are to serve community and local development. Box 1 describes how the University of California System differentiates the roles of its TEIs to better serve both the state and students. Table 14: Tripartite System of Tertiary Education in Selected OECD Countries Country Tier I Tier II Tier III Australia 8 research universities 32 new universities and 68 TAFE* colleges some TAFE* colleges China 36 key universities Key universities in 31 Some 2,000 provincial, municipal, provinces and municipalities and private universities. France 37 Grande Ecoles 86 universities 123 instituts universitarires de technologie (IUT) 280 sections de brevet de technicien supérieur Germany 78 technical and 182 Fachhochschulen FHS, Dual training institutes comprehensive 43 Berufsakademien universities MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 27 Korea 10 public universities, 7 24 public universities 4 public junior colleges (South) private universities 150 private universities 144 private junior colleges Mexico 10 federal and state 54 public universities 60 technical universities universities 184 private teacher training 211 technical institutes 8 private universities colleges 995 private career colleges 249 public teacher training college United 20 “Oxbridge� and 53 newer and polytechnic 340 further education colleges Kingdom “Russel� universities universities USA 690 Ivy League, public 1760 polytechnic, colleges 1075 community colleges and and private research and smaller state universities institutes of technology universities Source: Mikhail, 2008. While it could be helpful to provide different tracks for scientific, professional, para-professional and vocational training, it is important to recognize generic, “soft skills� and life-skills needed to survive in a globalized economy and to generate self-employment. These include effective communication (oral presentation and expository writing), proficiency in a language of wider communication (e.g., English or a major regional language), general knowledge of economics, law and business (e.g. banking, finance, accounting and marketing), general scientific literacy and computer skills, and general knowledge about world affairs and cultural sensitivity. While some of these skills have been considered traditionally as humanities and professional education, they have a strong utility function to improve the adaptability of graduates in the future. Since these subjects are not very costly, and are offered by many of the private TEIs, it is important to make use of their comparative advantage and improve system articulation so that students can move from one TEI to another, from the private to the public sector, and vice versa, to improve their skills and qualifications. 28 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Box 1: California’s System of Universities and Community Colleges The State of California differentiates the missions and pool of students for three tiers of its public higher education system -- University of California (UC), California State Universities (CSU), and community colleges. The UC draws from the top 8% of high school graduates, CSU, from the top 33%, and community colleges have an open admission policy to students with a high school diploma, or a general education diploma, or simply over the age of 18. It is also very low cost at $20 per credit per semester. There is a statutory coordinating body for the entire system, and the key feature of the system is the articulation and transferability of credits and students from one tier to another. Community colleges offers a range of programs: (i) Associate’s degrees take two years and allows students who have completed the necessary “core� requirements to transfer to a four-year institution and earn a degree. (ii) Certification is provided in a number of vocational training (e.g. nursing, computer repair, law enforcement) which require preparation for a state or national examination, or where certification would allow a higher salary upon entering the workforce. (iii) Local services of local interest include job placement, adult continuing education classes, customized training with local businesses, and working with high school dropouts to earn a high school diploma or obtain a GED. (iv) Bachelor’s degrees are gaining popularity. Some community colleges offer specialized programs in conjunction with other universities. 4.2. CONCENTRATE RESOURCES TO FUND PREMIER UNIVERSITIES THROUGH COMPETITIVE FUNDING An examination of the world’s top universities found that high quality tertiary education is supported by abundant resources. Harvard University, for example, had an endowment of $37 billion, an annual expenditure of $3.2 billion, and a per student expenditure of $105,041 before the crisis (Table 15). Other top universities in the world have expenditures in similar orders of magnitude. Table 15: Ranking of the World’s Top Universities, 2007 SJTU 2008 THES 2008 Universityr Annual Student Expenditures per ranking ranking expenditures enrollment student (US$) (US$) 1 1 Harvard Universitya,b $3,170,650,000 29,900 $106,041.81 (United States) 2 17 Stanford Universityc $3,265,800,000 19,782 $165,089.48 (United States) 3 36 University of California, $1,700,000,000 32,910 $51,656.03 Berkeley (United States) 4 3 University of Cambridged $1,470,940,000 25,465 $57,763.20 (United Kingdom) MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 29 5 9 Massachusetts Institute of $2,207,600,000 10,220 $216,007.83 Technology (MIT)m (United States) 6 5 California Institute of $2,287,291,000 2,245 $1,018,837.86 Technologye (United States) 7 10 Columbia Universityg $2,690,000,000 23,709 $113,459.02 (United States) 8 12 Princeton Universityf $1,196,570,000 6,708 $178,379.55 (United States) 9 8 University of Chicagoh $1,497,700,000 14,962 $100,100.25 (United States) 10 4 University of Oxfordi $1,081,350,000 23,620 $45,781.12 (United Kingdom) Source: Salmi, 2009. Note: SJTU stands for the ranking by Shanghai Jiaotong University of China, and THES stands for ranking by Times Higher Education Supplement. By contrast, Mongolia has spread its scarce resources too thinly to finance tertiary education. Only if higher education is of high quality Mongolia can develop the skill base through teaching and learning, and develop the knowledge base through research and knowledge transfer to society. To reverse the trend of providing low-cost and low-quality education, it is imperative to concentrate resources in financing on a few premier institutions that attain world standards at least in its undergraduate teaching. GoM should also identify programs that have potential to become world class. There are certain areas that Mongolian universities are very strong at, namely, geology, mining, and paleontology. Strengthening the comparative advantage need not be extended to the entire institution, but to enable certain department or certain subfields to rise above others. Sometimes, specific events or a natural endowment can provide the opportunity for a field to excel. For example, the University of Hong Kong directed its focus on the SARS epidemic in 2003, and its biochemistry department mobilized all the staff to engage in relevant research. Afterwards, it became one of the world’s top centers for research on virus epidemics, and is consulted by World Health Organization when other pandemic comes along. Similarly, its Department of Architecture started to study buildings’ abilities to withstand earthquakes after its involvement in the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, and is bolstering its reputation in this area. Mongolian universities, if properly supported by adequate resources and plunged into the international network of researchers, can rise to the occasion under similar circumstances. In the process of building up premier programs and institutions, it is important to identify the comparative strengths of various institutions and their academic offerings and build on those strengths. However, it is essential to use a competitive process to aid the targeting of resources to finance premier institutions. 30 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE In Mongolia the creation of a competitive fund should be considered to aid the process of consolidation and rationalization. In such a scheme, TEIs are asked to submit their funding proposals along with their respective institutional development plans with key performance indicators (including faculty strengths in course offerings, academic qualification, research and publications, student graduation rates, employment rates, and student evaluation results). The funds will be used to fund equipment, facility improvement, and staff upgrading and professional development. They could also be used as block grants to cover salaries for faculty members. This would be akin to research grants in US institutions, which also cover the salary of researchers on a multi-year basis. This would reduce the incentives to use enrollment expansion to sustain financial viability, and encourage faculty members to devote time on teaching and research. Student fees could be used by the institutions for supplemental investments. Decisions should be made to award funding to the disciplines and courses that are well related to labor market needs. In this way, those weaker programs would be weeded out or have to cooperate with stronger programs in order to survive. It is not recommended to set admission quotas for the institution, but essentially to use the competitive funding mechanism to guide the rationalization process. Box 2 describes international experiences in using competitive funds to stimulate institutional development and cultures of excellence. Merely merging institutions, however, does not necessarily achieve cost savings as salaries continue to rely on tuition fees. Thus, the competitive funds should also include coverage of at least a certain percentage of salaries and reward faculty members for research and contribution to regional and national development, in order to realign incentives. The creation of a competitive fund would entail additional public expenditure and a replacement of the existing system of financing. But without such a mechanism, it would be difficult to break the cycle of low cost, low quality education. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 31 Box 2: Competitive Funding as an Innovative Financing Tool In recent years a number of countries have introduced competitive funding schemes as an innovative and flexible financing mechanism to allocate resources to TEIs. Competitive funds can target a variety of sector issues and are an output-oriented funding mechanism. As such, they can increase cost- effectiveness and enhance quality and relevance. Under most competitive funds, institutions compete for investment on the basis of their own strategic planning and choices. An independent body selects the best projects based on potential, performance and track record, encouraging a culture of fair competition and usually peer evaluation. Selection is based on transparent objectives, eligibility and selection criteria. There are several advantages to using competitive funds: they provide incentives for institutions to perform; they encourage institutions to clarify their mission and strategy, and engage in medium term planning; and they can cater for complex indicators of impact and success that are tailored to institutional characteristics and needs. Competitive funds in recent years have supported a range of activities, from traditional investments to systematic reform. In Bangladesh and Indonesia, competitive funds have supported quality enhancement by providing grants for equipment, libraries, laboratories and buildings for study programs in technical training institutions, and undergraduate and graduate university programs in priority fields. In Chile, the Government’s competitive fund has supported systemic change by providing grants in areas such as degree structure and curricular innovation, transfers of academic credits, secondary to tertiary transition, inclusion of marginalized groups, and skill upgrading of faculty members. A critical component to carry out a successful competitive fund is central and institutional capacity. The Government must set the rules of eligibility, selection, and implementation criteria, and institutions must have the capacity for the supervision of internal and decentralized projects. While competitive funding schemes are flexible and are periodically renegotiated to reflect changes in macro environment, they do offer less predictability than formula funding. However, they remain extremely useful in stimulating systemic change. Source: World Bank Staff Reports 4.3. HIGHER EDUCATION COMMISSION AND QUALITY ASSURANCE The lack of an integrated governance structure to guide the strategic development of tertiary education has contributed to the fragmentation of the system and the poor quality of education. It is desirable to set up an autonomous National Commission for Tertiary Education with broad representation from industry, key professions, and national and international academics so that diverse views are harnessed. The Commission should be charged with the responsibility to set the strategic direction for tertiary education, use inputs from the Quality Assurance system to allocate block grants, oversee the development of the National Qualification Framework, and monitor how TEIs facilitate regional development. The Commission could also 32 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE sponsor policy analysis, conduct strategic planning. In the UK, for example, the Commission on Higher Education has helped set strategic direction by articulating five aims: (i) enhancing excellence in learning and teaching; (ii) widening participation and fair access; (iii) promoting employer engagement and skills; (iv) enhancing excellence in research; and (v) enhancing the contribution of HE to the economy and society. These mission statements are very close to the vision of Mongolian higher education. Box 3 describes the experience of New Zealand, a small country with a population of 3 million, in how it uses the Commission to steer the tertiary education system to achieve national objectives. Higher education should engage more directly with employers to identify changing job requirements and monitoring employers’ expectations of graduates. There is a need for a systematic approach to labor market information provision through tracer studies of graduates to track trends in earnings nationwide and discern regional trends. The Commission should require all TEIs to report on agreed performance indicators and labor market outcomes of graduates by areas of study, as a basis for its decision to rationalize and consolidate TEIs. The Commission should publish these statistics to provide information to consumers and hold TEIs publicly accountable. The establishment of this body should be done simultaneously with invigorating the MMCEA, which should be responsible for the quality assurance of all academic programs and institutions. The QA process should identify strengths and weaknesses of each institution for two purposes. The first is to provide information and advice for the institutions to improve themselves and the second is to provide guidance to policymakers for rationalization and consolidation of the system. Involving professional associations in quality assurance is one mechanism that has proven useful in many countries in providing feedback to tertiary institutions and in helping link labor market needs to the academic programs of colleges and universities. A quality assessment mechanism should also be introduced for bachelor, master and Ph.D. programs. The involvement of professional associations in Specialized and Professional Accreditation in the United States is one successful example. The QA mechanism should also have consequences. It should enable the Commission to make decisions about the rationalization and consolidation of programs. The Accreditation Agency should also participate in the Asia-Pacific Quality Assurance Network to raise its standards of world-class quality using international benchmarks. Box 4 describes the experience of Singapore in its efforts to improve the quality of private TEIs. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 33 Box 3: New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission The Tertiary Education Commission Te Amorangi M’tauranga Matua (TEC) is governed by a Board of Commissioners which is appointed by, and responsible to, the Minister for Tertiary Education. The TEC operates within strategic and policy frameworks set by the government. The TEC is a Crown Agent which must give effect to government policy when directed by the Minister for Tertiary Education Under the Crown Entities Act, the Minister may direct the TEC to undertake any tasks that are consistent with the TEC’s functions. The Minister may not direct the TEC to provide or deny funding to any specified organization. The Chief Executive of the TEC has an independent function under the Education Act 1989 to monitor tertiary education institutions for risks related to financial or operational viability and to report directly to the Minister. The TEC’s principal function is to give effect to the tertiary education strategy. The TEC is also required to operate the tertiary funding system generally, monitor the performance of tertiary education organizations, and provide policy advice to the Minister for Tertiary Education. The TEC manages Government funding for TEIs, provides policy advice and implementation across the sector, and provides relevant support to TEIs. Its actions are guided by the Government’s priorities for higher education, namely (i) a high-trust and high-quality tertiary funding environment; (ii) worthwhile qualifications for all students leaving the education system; and (iii) an appropriately trained and competent workforce. In pursuing its directive, it works with several key government agencies, including the Ministry of Education , the New Zealand Qualifications Authority , and the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, as well as a range of private, education sector and industry representative groups. The Board of Commissioners is responsible for governance. It is appointed by, and responsible to, the Minister for Tertiary Education. It comprises at least six, but not more than nine, members. Current board of commissioners consists of an executive chair, deputy chair (university leader), academic and industry representatives, and one currently enrolled student. The Commission’s annual operating revenue is approximately NZ$ 75 million, 80 percent of which is provided by the Ministry of Education. Sources: Tertiary Education Commission of New Zealand, http://www.tec.govt.nz/ Tertiary Education Commission of New Zealand. (2009). Annual Report for the year that ended 30 June 2009. Retrieved 3 February 2010 from http://www.tec.govt.nz/Documents/Publications/TEC-Annual-Report-final-2009. pdf 34 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Box 4: How Singapore is proposing to deal with the proliferation of private tertiary education institution to assure quality Singapore has about 1,000 private institutions of various sizes and quality. The largest have over 10,000 students, and the smallest have a few hundred, offering a single field of study, e.g. hotel management. As more and more foreign students, particularly Asian students, flock to Singapore to study and mostly enroll in these private institutions, the Government is concerned that the reputation of Singapore as a high quality producer could be tarnished. As a result, it is preparing a law to regulate private tertiary education which is likely to pass in September 2009. The law will require private tertiary education institutions to be accredited from time to time. For institutions that are judged to be of dubious quality, they would be given one year to improve themselves or face closure. They will then have to be re-accredited again. For better institutions, the duration of operation could be up to five years, but they are still required to be re-accredited. Under these new regulations private TEIs will be under pressure to perform and improve quality. Source: Interview with Mr. Lin, chair of the private tertiary education council on March 31, 2009. The current accreditation system in Mongolia does not engage with distance or overseas learning activities and thus is not providing its students with knowledge about how these programs compare to domestically-offered ones. Thus the internationally growing trend towards open and distance learning presents new challenges which threaten the quality of tertiary education in countries with less than strong regulatory capacity like Mongolia. The need to strengthen the capacity of national quality assurance systems is therefore urgent both to take advantage of these new opportunities and to protect the public against fraudulent or questionable quality providers. 4.4. PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONSUMER PROTECTION Annual publication of TEIs performance indicators, and student employment statistics is key to ensure public accountability and consumer protection. In pursuing fields with little labor market demand, students could invest a substantial amount of money and time only to discover at the time of graduation that their skills have no place in the economy. Thus, making such labor market information available would help parents and youths make informed decision regarding whether to pursue higher education or other tracks of training. In this regard, international experience (e.g. Chile, Colombia, Italy) with labor market observatory could provide relevant example for Mongolia. Box 5 describes how these labor market observatories work to guide students and parents in making a decision about entering tertiary education and which field to pursue. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 35 Box 5: Labor Market Observatories in Italy and Chile Orientation and employment opportunities are the two essential steps that can determine the success of tertiary education’s ultimate purpose: training citizens that would contribute to a country’s economy, development and growth. Dropout and unemployment demonstrate, on the contrary, a failure or inefficiency of the education system to reach that goal, and can often reveal to be extremely costly to the society as a whole (in terms of education public spending loss, taxation loss, and public financial support for unemployed). Two innovative initiatives have intended to respond to the challenges of orientation and employment opportunities: AlmaLaurea in Italy, and Futuro Laboral in Chile. Both projects seek to provide useful, practical and easy-to-use online information on career perspectives and job opportunities. The overall idea is to equip all tertiary education stakeholders, in particular students and families, with relevant information to make the right choices. Whereas AlmaLaurea focuses more on the after graduation steps, Futuro Laboral gives priority to the previous stage of tertiary studies. AlmaLaurea provides the largest Italian database of graduates resumes (900,000 from 50 universities as of June 2007) and now gathers 67% of all Italian graduates’ profiles. AlmaLaurea was created in 1994, is currently managed by a consortium of Italian universities and supported by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research. The services offered to graduates and students include the following: online posting of graduate resume, advices to improve resume, and possibility to update it regularly; access to a large bank of job offers and enterprises characteristics, and possibility to answer job offers online through AlmaLaurea Website; postgraduates programs are also described to better match students’ needs for further education; alert are sent via emails to keep the user on track and facilitate his or her proceedings. The incentives for universities to subscribe to AlmaLaurea are significant: provide more options to their students, think about new curricula and orientation, and develop internships/first jobs options. AlmaLaurea also provides annual information on the occupational conditions of graduates, including PhDs, gathers archives of graduate and doctorate thesis titles, validates the administrative records of graduates, and helps promote post-graduate and master courses through the website. Employers, on their part, have online access to the largest Italian database of graduates’ resumes, and can easily purchase CVs, select best candidates through criteria matching, announce new job offers and describe their company to attract best graduates. Futuro Laboral focuses more on the orientation stage. Supported by the Ministry of Education and mutually organized by the University Adolfo Abánez School of Government and the University of Chile’s Department of Industrial Engineering, it aims to provide orientation tools to youth and students. As such, Futuro Laboral provides information on the occupational situation of graduates of hundred different professional and technical careers that represent 75% of technical and professional graduates. These hundred careers are thus described, with salary ranges, the type of study they imply and employment opportunities they generate. As with AlmaLaurea, Futuro Laboral’s approach is very practical and user friendly. Through its website, students can look for a program by level, by area, or by career, they can visit foreign websites containing information on career and work in other countries, and have access to an online library referring to a large bank of information on the employability of technical and professional graduates. These two initiatives show particular examples of labor market observatories that aim to provide a better understanding and match between individuals’ professional aspirations, tertiary education, and occupational trends. As such, they offer concrete responses to one of the main challenges of tertiary education: its relevance to individuals and societies. Source: Written by Jamil Salmi for this report, 2010. 36 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 4.5. BETTER TARGETING OF FINANCIAL AID AND IMPROVEMENT OF BASIC EDUCATION Ensuring equity of access is central to providing opportunity for increased earning and intergenerational mobility. Data indicate that lower income and rural students are significantly under-represented in tertiary education. The poor do not have equal opportunity of access because they have much lower basic education completion rates and because they often cannot afford to pay high tuition fees. Table 16 shows that rural students have much lower school completion rates than urban students at all levels of education, be that primary, lower secondary, upper secondary, and tertiary. Even if they enter tertiary education, they have much lower completion rates. This is likely the result of the fact that their financial burden is proportionally higher relative to their family income than the rich. Rural children, particularly boys, have lower completion rates at all levels. Likewise, the same pattern holds for the poorest and the richest quintiles. These data indicate that, in addition to reforming the tertiary education system to ensure better access, efforts must also be made to ensure school completion for all subgroups in order to provide equitable access to tertiary education. Table 16: Spatial and Income Disparities in Educational Completion Rates (% entering primary that complete each level) Children aged 8-25 Total Urban Rural Boys Girls Poorest Richest Primary 93.95 96.74 89.36 91.69 96.13 90.83 96.60 Lower secondary 81.04 87.41 70.00 75.98 85.72 72.93 90.61 Upper Secondary 54.87 60.01 45.73 48.73 60.35 42.59 69.93 Diplomas 41.91 47.20 31.56 38.31 45.49 39.59 51.47 University 9.43 10.38 7.79 10.36 9.20 7.48 12.60 Source: HIES 2006, as quoted in “Mongolia: Consolidating the Gains, Managing the Boom, and Moving to Better Service Delivery,� World Bank, 2008. Notes: Figures are Kaplan Meier estimates, which account for censoring (i.e. individuals still attending school at the time of the survey only contribute to the estimation sample up to last level currently attended). Survival rates indicate the cumulative probability of making the transition to each level. To improve equity, the STF should also be reformed. Since the overall rate of loan repayment to the STF is only 2 percent, and the government occasionally forgives many loans, more resources will need to be mobilized, perhaps even from the private sector, to sustain and scale-up the STF over the long run. One proposal may be to enlist the efforts of private commercial banks. These banks could provide more flexibility in terms of accessibility and amounts of loan defaults, though the government may still wish to guarantee the loans and subsidize the interest. This may be one way for the government to save a large amount of resources that can then be reallocated into existing or new need-based financial assistance programs. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 37 Furthermore, because the STF does not track the extent to which its programs reach its targeted groups, it is clear that a stronger system of monitoring and evaluation is needed. Such a system would help better understand whether or not the program is reaching intended beneficiaries and what overall impact the program is having on student achievement. Developing a more thorough examination of financial eligibility grounded in an appropriate methodology for STF assistance could improve the equitable distribution of financial aid. Such a methodology should contain not only a reliable way to determine family income, but also a method to reasonably estimate the expected family contribution towards college costs. Any measurement of family income must consider not only cash income, but also the substantial size of income from subsidiary economic activity or livestock (World Bank, 2008). 38 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 5. TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING: COMPLEMENTARY TO TERTIARY EDUCATION? The desirability of developing a diversified and flexible education system that allows for multiple exists and re-entries across field of studies and between subsectors calls for expanding vocationally oriented institutions and programs (at secondary and post-secondary levels), community college types of institutions, teaching colleges and universities, and a very small number of research universities. This chapter explores the potential for skill development and employment generation as an option for youths. 5.1. THE STRUCTURE AND OUTCOMES OF MONGOLIA’S TVET SYSTEM TVET is administered under the purview of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (MECS) and the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare Services (MLSWS). MECS oversees formal long term TVET (more than two years) while MLSWS oversees the non-formal short term TVET (ranging from two weeks to 45 days). All schools offering preliminary vocational education recruit students who have completed 9th grade, while intermediate vocational education institutions recruit students who have completed 11th grade. Basic characteristics of the system are presented in Table 17. Table 17: Basic Outcomes of TVET in Mongolia Total No. of Students 37,867 of which females 17,844 Total No. of Graduates 2008 8,745 2009 11,408 Total No. of Schools 70 of which: Public Vocational Schools offering preliminary training 23 of which schools are intermediate level 3 Private schools offering preliminary training 9 Public Technical Schools offering preliminary and intermediate training 11 Private Vocational and Technical Higher Education Schools 6 Source: MECS, 2009. Under informal short-term TVET, the LSWSO coordinates activities related to employment and provides accreditation to 1,200 training providers to conduct informal short-term TVET. Of the 1,200 training MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 39 providers, 150 were also accredited to receive funding from the Employment Promotion Fund to train unemployed people. The main purpose for these short-term vocational trainings is to help unemployed people learn a new skill to seek employment. Because technical skills are generally accorded low status and are given little recognition in Mongolia, and because academic education is seen, in many cases mistakenly, as a more helpful path toward lucrative employment, most young people continue to choose academic education rather than vocational training. This is despite the fact that there are significant emerging opportunities in trade occupations and technical jobs. About 140,000 Mongolian students are attending university (about 15 percent of Mongolia’s workforce), and many of these graduates face difficulties in finding jobs because of the country’s skill mismatch. In 2006, only 7,100 (5.4 percent) of tertiary graduates were from TVET institutions, of which 48 percent were female. Shifting larger proportions of students into the TVET system may be one way to address the skills mismatch and improve labor market outcomes. However, such a policy option would be viable only if the quality of education and training students receive is of good quality and relevant to market demands, which can only be achieved through an overhaul of the existing system. With a good quality TVET system, graduates are more likely to be employed. However, despite the demand from employers for vocational skills, public investment in TVET is limited. Facilities and machinery are often outdated and faulty, and private providers are not currently part of a regulatory and monitoring framework to ensure that training meets standards in terms of competency, course, credentials, and occupational safety and health. 5.2. CHALLENGES TO THE QUALITY OF MONGOLIA’S TVET SYSTEM Governance. The National Vocational Education and Training Methodology Center (NVETMC) is responsible for the development of skills standards and curricular materials for both formal and informal TVET courses, the production of textbooks, the training of TVET teachers and industry practitioners to develop modular training materials, teachers’ pedagogical training, and research work on TVET-related issues, such as labor market studies. The NVETMC is located in MECS and has five full-time staff; there are another six regional centers manned by two staff each. There is also an accreditation agency known as the National Council for Education Accreditation (MNCEA)8 whose role is to accredit the quality of TVET programs. However, it has accredited less than 10 percent of all TVET programs. Governance could be described as fragmented. Different agencies responsible for different roles in the TVET system are working in silo without much coordination, interaction and synergy. For example, the NVETMC has developed 70 skill standards but the National Council for Education Accreditation has yet to undertake a single accreditation of any of these programs. In addition, dated equipment, 8 To date, the MNCEA has accredited 11 schools delivering TVET education. 40 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE insufficient training, and the lack of skill development opportunities for teachers all seem to suggest that the developed standards and curricula have not been deployed at the school level. Furthermore, there is currently no structured and coordinated pre-service or in-service teachers’ pedagogy or technical skill training. Teachers’ pedagogy training has been left very much to the initiative of the TVET schools. For technical skills upgrading, some schools send their teachers periodically for skills training. However, because of the lack of modern equipment that are in line with the needs of the employers, it is likely that most teachers would need technical skills training when new equipment and machines are put in place by schools. At the policy level, although there is evidence of collaboration with industry, this is still very limited to students’ attachments which range from 30 to 45 days. Any attachment beyond the stated duration is at the discretion of the school directors, and there is little initiative currently by MECS to forge closer collaboration with the industry or employers. Ineffective use of resources and outdated equipment. Public spending on TVET is roughly 6 percent of the total public spending on education. However, about 45 percent of the TVET budget is used for the purpose of students’ stipends, and less than one percent is used for the purpose of infrastructure development and training equipment acquisition, which are critically inadequate. Most of the infrastructure of TVET schools needs rehabilitation and expansion. Interviews with TVET school directors revealed that the existing infrastructure of most schools, including practical training facilities, may not be able to meet the training needs of implementing a demand-led competency-based TVET curriculum. For most schools, practical training equipment and machines are either outdated, broken or of insufficient quantity to meet the requirements of practical training. Many schools are still using Russian-era equipment. The policy of providing stipends for students attending preliminary vocational education has led to an increase in enrollment of TVET students and as a result put on additional pressure on existing facilities and infrastructure. Indeed, while some updated equipment donated by developmental partners have been helpful, they are most often only in limited quantity and may not be sufficient to meet the needs of an increased class size. 5.3. OPTIONS TO IMPROVE QUALITY AND RELEVANCE System Review. One of the key recommendations to improve the quality and relevance of the TVET subsector would be for the government to take stock of the current system to determine what is working and identify gaps. An in-depth situational analysis of the TVET system should be conducted on an immediate basis. The analysis should also provide strategic recommendations to ensure sustainable reform of the TVET system. A review of the methodology and curriculum materials developed could help refine teaching methodologies, systems of deployment of materials to schools, the way TVET textbooks are published, and systems for retaining staff at the NVETMC to ensure institutional memory that would facilitate the work of the new TVET agency. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 41 Governance. The role of the National Vocational Education Training and Methodology Center from MECS can be absorbed within the new TVET agency to avoid the duplication of activities. The number of curriculum development specialists should also be expanded, through recruitment and training, taking into consideration the necessity to revise and develop new curricula according to the needs of the economy. As the work on curriculum development is very important to the success of the reformed TVET system, if the organizational structure9 of the proposed new TVET agency has not factored in the necessity of human resources, then it may make sense not to have the TVET agency absorbing this function but to develop a framework to forge collaboration instead. Infrastructure and Training Equipment. Resources must be channeled into the updating of equipment and instituting practical training workshops. Training equipment must not only meet the requirements of revised curricula but also meet the standards and specifications used by industry. Documented practical workshop norms must be established to guide all schools in establishing standard practical training facilities. Workshop norms should guide the number and type of equipment needed for practical training and at the same time ensure that the practical workshop follows rules of occupation safety and health. Since the state may not be able to purchase sufficient practical training equipment and machines initially, the acquisition of simulated training equipment, which is relatively cheaper, maybe a good option. In addition, an apprenticeship system could be introduced with willing industry partners where students could attend schools on a block release or day release basis with the rest of their time spent in industries performing work under structured guidance from trained industry practitioners. Curriculum Development and Governance The approach should be one that is demand-led and competency-based. This is widely used in many countries such as Australia, Singapore (Box6), UK, Canada, and New Zealand. TVET schools should only implement courses that have clear demand from employers, and curricula should be guided by clear indications from industries and practitioners on the skills and knowledge requirements of that particular occupation. 9 Due to the global financial crisis the new TVET agency structure may have about 20 staff. 42 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Box 6: Singapore’s Institute of Technical Education (ITE) Curriculum Development Model In recent years a number of countries have introduced competitive funding schemes as an innovative and flexible financing mechanism to allocate resources to TEIs. Competitive funds can target a variety of sector issues and are an output-oriented funding mechanism. As such, they can increase cost- effectiveness and enhance quality and relevance. ITE adopts a structured and externally-oriented process in the planning, design and delivery of its key programs, with extensive external consultation to identify training needs for course planning, followed by a 5-stage process to design and implement the specific courses identified. Curriculum Development begins with a training needs analysis. ITE has a system in place for identifying the training gaps in the economy, which can be addressed by developing appropriate courses for school leavers and workers. The government’s economic policies and initiatives determine the long term planning of ITE courses. The manpower requirements projected by the Ministry of Manpower together with relevant government economic agencies such as the Economic Development Board (EDB) and Info-Communications Development Authority (IDA), are key factors in deciding the types of programs to be introduced by ITE. This together with regular feedback on demand, the interests of school leavers, as well as an annual evaluation of performance indicators of the existing courses, will lead to a determination of annual intake capacities. Once the courses have been identified and approved, a 5-stage systems approach is adopted to design and develop the programmes. The Analysis phase determines the need and demand for training, the skills, knowledge and attitude required of an occupation, and the skills standard to be attained. In this phase, skilled practitioners are invited to participate in a focus group exercise to provide information to the curriculum development specialist. The Design phase determines the design and structure of the training programme. Entry requirements and instructional objectives are specified. The assessment scheme and test design are laid down. The requirements for training facilities and staff training are also identified. In the Development phase, instructional materials (teaching and learning materials) used by the training staff and students are developed. The materials include teaching notes, practical job sheets, audio- visual aids and computer-based training packages. In the Implementation phase, training is implemented and monitored in a pilot course. Formative evaluation is conducted to identify deficiencies and refine the curriculum, its materials, and the delivery system. Finally, in the evaluation phase, the training course is evaluated to determine whether it has achieved its intended goals. The major considerations evaluated are whether the students have learned what they are supposed to learn and able to perform their jobs in a way that meets the expectations of their employers. Source: The Institute of Technical Education Singapore. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 43 In-service and Pre-service Teachers Recruitment, Selection and Training. In terms of teachers’ recruitment and selection, the new TVET agency could specify minimum teachers’ qualifications (See Box 7 on Denmark’s Model). TVET teachers should have the technical skill of one level above what they would be teaching, have at least three years of relevant work experience, and have attended pedagogy training. It may not be necessary for all TVET teachers to have a bachelor’s degree since this type of degree usually focuses more on knowledge and less on skills. The system of recruitment should allow flexibility for the recruitment of highly skilled technicians who may not be educated up to bachelor degree level. Moreover, the teachers in the existing system should attend in-service training on pedagogy and attend industrial attachments with industry partners during school vacations so that they could acquire industry knowledge. Newly recruited teachers should attend pre-service training for both pedagogy as well as technical skills. TVET schools should also be encouraged to invite industry practitioners as part-time teaching staff. BOX 7: DENMARK’S TVET TEACHERS’ QUALIFICATION AND TRAINING In Denmark, teachers in vocational education and training programmes have normally completed vocational education in the subjects in which they teach and have typically also pursued higher education. A minimum of 5 years of professional experience is required, but only 2 years of professional experience for teachers in the general subject areas. The teachers of general subjects normally have a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree. Teachers who do not already have pedagogical training must take a pedagogical training course for vocational college teachers. This training must be completed within the first 2 years of appointment to a job at the college. The individual teacher is obliged to keep his or her academic and pedagogical knowledge up to date. The college is required to draw up a plan for the competence development of the teachers’ group at the college. Source: www.eng.uvm.dk. Improving the Financing of TVET. A combination of a public and private financing model could be adopted in Mongolia. Many countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Tanzania imposed a levy on employers as part of their contributions to develop a skilled workforce. Public-private partnerships or private investment in TVET should be encouraged so that the private sector invests in infrastructure and training facilities instead of the government. Furthermore, the funding of stipends for students could be reviewed so that more funding could be channeled to students attending courses that have strong demand from employers and fewer to courses that show signs of saturation in the labor market. The Establishment of a National Qualifications Framework (NQF).In the immediate future, a centralized examination, assessment and qualification system must be established as a matter of priority. This system will ensure consistency in the output of the TVET system. It is important that in designing a 44 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE centralized examination, assessment and qualification system, practitioners from industries are involved. A well-designed curriculum development model that is demand-led and competency-based and an examination, assessment and qualification system which involves industries’ participation will build a solid foundation of quality assurance. It will also ensure consistent quality of the TVET outputs. In the long run, a NQF framework similar to those adopted by countries such as Australia (Box8), New Zealand, UK, and South Africa could be implemented. Data Monitoring. A coherent and coordinated labor market information system must be established to provide current information on labor market requirements and serve as a form of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) on the output of the reformed TVET system. A good M&E system would ensure that there is quality control on the output of the TVET system and provide checks and balances to employers of TVET graduates. The labor market information system must enforce formal tracer studies on an annual basis on all TVET schools. Data from tracer studies as well as information collected from employers’ censuses and other labor market surveys will provide more complete information for the new TVET agency to make informed policy formulations and strategic plans for the system. In sum, with a strong demand for TVET, it makes sense to channel some students into this subsector. However, this strategy will only be successful if there are sufficient investments into the supply of the system. These investments require additional resources and are urgently needed to increase the capacity for governing the subsector, improve the quality of TVET delivery, forge greater linkages with industry, and provide placement assistance to graduates. While the challenges of the lack of infrastructure and equipment, poor quality assurance mechanisms, and the lack of opportunity for faculty skill upgrading are similar to those faced by the tertiary subsector, the challenges faced by the TVET subsector may indeed be tougher. The Government needs to make vocational education an attractive alternative to academic higher education and work to remove the stigma around TVET as a second-track option. After all, creating new job openings in sectors with higher productivity and higher wages and earnings will not have the desired impact on living standards unless more Mongolian women and men have the skills that employers’ demand. BOX 8: THE AUSTRALIAN QUALIFICATION FRAMEWORK (AQF) The AQF is a unified system of national qualifications in senior secondary schools, vocational education and training institutions and institutions of higher learning. It has 14 levels of qualifications as follows: - Senior Secondary Certificate of Education; - Bachelor Degree; - Certificate 1; - Vocational Graduate Certificate; - Certificate 2; - Vocational Graduate Diploma; - Certificate 3; - Graduate Certificate; - Certificate 4; - Graduate Diploma; - Diploma, Advance Diploma; - Masters Degree; - Associate Degree; - Doctorate Degree. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 45 The AQF was introduced on 1 Jan 1995 on a nation-wide basis and was phased in over a period of five years, achieving full implementation by year 2000. It is governed by a council, led by an independent Chair and Council members, represented by the three education sectors, governments and industry. The objectives of the AQF are to: - Provide nationally consistent recognition of outcomes achieved in post-compulsory education; - Help with developing flexible pathways which assist people to move easily between education and training sectors and between those sectors and the labour market by providing the basis for recognition of prior learning (RPL), including credit transfer and work and life experience; - Integrate and streamline the requirements of participating providers, employers and employees, individuals and interested organizations; - Offer flexibility to suit the diversity of purposes of education and training; - Encourage individuals to progress through the levels of education and training by improving access to qualifications, clearly defining avenues for achievement, and generally contributing to lifelong learning; - Encourage the provision of more and higher quality vocational education and training through qualifications that normally meet workplace requirements and vocational needs, thus contributing to national economic performance; and - Promote national and international recognition of qualifications offered in Australia.Source: Australian Qualification Website, www.aqf.edu.au. 46 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 6. CONCLUSIONS Increasing investment in all subsectors of education – from primary and secondary to post-basic – is imperative if Mongolia is to reduce its poverty, increase its employment, and make its labor force more responsive to the needs of employers. With regards to tertiary education, there is much to do. To summarize, as a result of rapid expansion, an inequitable financing mechanism, and insufficient quality assurance, Mongolia’s tertiary education suffers from low external efficiency, inequitable access, and poor quality. There is an urgent need to: (i) improve the coherence, governance, and responsiveness of the country’s tertiary education system to the changing demands of the market economy; (ii) improve efficiency and resource utilization; and (iii) improve the quality of curricula, teaching, and learning in the subsector. To improve these areas requires making strategic choices and investments in tertiary education. The following steps should be considered: Summary of Recommendations • Improve the quality of basic education to ensure the poor complete schooling so as to enhance the probability of their enrollment in higher education; • Rationalize TEIs in order to concentrate resources on fewer institutions and programs to help them reach international standards; • Use competitive block grants to allocate resources (such as equipment and staff training) to the best programs (as measured by key performance indicators and labor market outcomes) on a tri- annual basis to allow for predictability of funding and to give time to demonstrate outcomes; • Invigorate the accreditation and quality assurance mechanisms, using international benchmarks, to facilitate rationalization of public and private institutions and to allow for good quality offshore programs to compete in Mongolia; • Develop a diversified but integrated tertiary education system so that each institution can play a key role in regional development and transfers between institutions can be made; • Establish a Tertiary Education Commission comprising representatives from industry, key professions, and academics from developed countries to set strategic direction, allocate block grants, and to oversee the role of TEIs in facilitating regional development; • Tighten eligibility criteria and improve the targeting of the State Training Fund to aid low-income students; MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 47 • Set up a labor market information system to inform the public about the key performance indicators of each institution and employment statistics by discipline to facilitate school and career choice; • Strengthen links between the supply of education and training and demand for skills in labor markets, through greater participation by employers and unions in reviewing training courses, setting occupational standards, offering on-the-job training and developing bridge programs between school and work, such as through apprenticeships and internships; and • Create a national council on vocational training, skills standards and certification, which involves key stakeholders who will work together to support the development of a legal framework, financing mechanisms, methodological centers, vocational standards, pedagogical issues, certification procedures, teacher training, school management, and training facilities. It is clear that implementation of most of these recommendations will require additional resources for the subsector, and planning reform for the subsector needs to begin. Investing in the subsector over the medium-term will be essential to ensure tertiary education’s continuing contribution to competitiveness and growth. 48 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE REFERENCES The Asian Development Bank. 2004. “The Mongolian Education and Training Fund: Building a Sustainable Future.� Draft. . Mikhail, Sam. 2008. Presentation at a Vocational Education Workshop at Peking University, June, 2008. Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science of Mongolia, Various Data, 2006, 2007, 2008. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Education at a Glance, 2007. Raza, Reehana. 2009. “Examining Autonomy and Accountability in Public and Private Tertiary Institutions�. World Bank (Draft) Ridao-Cano, “Mongolia: Building Skills for the New Economy,� Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2006. Sakellariou, 2009, “Industry and Skill Premia in Asia,� Background Paper for the World Bank’s Regional Study on Skills, Preliminary Draft. Salmi, Jamil. 2009. “The Challenge of Establishing World Class Universities,� Washington, DC: The World Bank. World Bank, The. 2001. China: Higher Education, Washington DC: The World Bank World Bank, The, 2008. “Mongolia: Consolidating the Gains, Managing the Boom, and Moving to Better Service Delivery.� UNDP Consultant’s Report on Higher Education in Mongolia. 2009 (Draft) MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 49 ANNEX 1: MONGOLIA’S EDUCATIONAL FRAMEWORK Grade Years 21 27 20 26 Doctorate Degree (3 years) 19 25 18 24 Master Degree (2 years) 17 23 16 22 Bachelor Degree (2 years) 15 21 Bachelor Degree (4-5 years) 14 20 Intermediate Vocational Education (1.5 years-3 ) 13 19 12 18 Preliminary Vocational Education (2.5 11 17 Senior Secondary School (2 years) years) 10 16 9 15 8 14 Junior Secondary School (4 years) 7 13 6 12 5 11 4 10 3 9 Primary School (5 years) 2 8 1 7 6 5 4 3 Kindergarten 2 1 50 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE FIGURE 2: MONGOLIAN POPULATION PROJECTIONS, 2010 AND 2020 Mongolia Population Pyramid for 2010 Predicted age and sex distribution for the year 2010: Mongolia: 2010 MALE FEMALE 80+ 75-79 70-74 65-69 60-64 55-59 50-54 45-49 40-44 35-39 30-34 25-29 20-24 15-19 10-14 5-9 0-4 200 150 100 50 0 0 50 100 150 200 Population (in thousands) Source: U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base. Mongolia Population Pyramid for 2020 Predicted age and sex distribution for the year 2020: Mongolia: 2009 MALE FEMALE 80+ 75-79 70-74 65-69 60-64 55-59 50-54 45-49 40-44 35-39 30-34 25-29 20-24 15-19 10-14 5-9 0-4 200 150 100 50 0 0 50 100 150 200 Population (in thousands) Source: U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 51 ANNEX 2: YEARS OF SCHOOLING OF THE YOUNGER AND OLDER ADULT POPULATION Change (%) Education 1998 2002 2007 (1998-07) Years of schooling 25-34 11.52 (n=1,404) 11.17 (n=2,096) 11.06 (n=7,003) -4.0 Male 11.13 (n=693) 10.56 (n=974) 10.40 (n=3,350) -6.6 Female 11.91 (n=711) 11.71 (n=1,122) 11.66 (n=3,653) -2.1 35-55 11.18 (n=1,982) 11.19 (n=3,278) 11.11 (n=11,674) -0.6 Male 11.19 (n=894) 10.87 (n=1,538) 10.84 (n=5,504) -3.1 Female 11.18 (n=1,088) 11.48 (n=1740) 11.36 (n=6,170) 1.6 ANNEX 3: TERTIARY PREMIA BY YEAR, AGE GROUP, GENDER AND SECTOR OF EMPLOYMENT Table A3.1: Wage Premia for different levels of education Education Premiums Change (%) (vs. No Education): 1998 2002 2007 (1998-07) Males 25-34 Primary (dropped) -0.587 -0.618** - Lower Secondary (dropped) -0.580 -0.420 - Secondary General completed -0.229 -0.703 0.057 - Secondary Vocational -0.220 -0.612 0.111 - Tertiary Diploma -0.152 -0.459 0.365 - University 0.068 -0.401 0.653** 860.3 R-sq adjusted -0.011 0.023 0.160 N 182 287 1,205 35-55 Primary 0.637 0.006 0.264 - Lower Secondary 1.42** 0.213 0.704*** -50.4 Secondary General completed 1.90*** 0.224 1.09*** -42.6 Secondary Vocational 1.43** 0.325 1.25*** -12.6 Tertiary Diploma 1.72*** 0.446 1.78*** 3.5 University 2.04*** 0.697 1.80*** -11.8 R-sq adjusted 0.100 0.098 0.173 N 327 638 2,192 Based on a Mincerian regression with basic controls. Note: Percentage changes were not calculated when premiums for both years were statistically insignificant. 52 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Table A3.2: Wage Premia for different levels of education Education Premiums Change (%) (vs. No Education): 1998 2002 2007 (1998-07) Females 25-34 Primary (dropped) (dropped) 0.565 - Lower Secondary 0.616 (dropped) 0.813* 32.0 Secondary General completed 0.685 0.230 1.48*** 116.1 Secondary Vocational 0.630 0.397** 1.87*** 196.8 Tertiary Diploma 0.880 0.628*** 2.22*** 152.3 University 1.22 0.918*** 2.31*** 89.3 R-sq adjusted 0.041 0.124 0.208 N 202 376 1,344 35-55 Primary (dropped) 0.899 -0.072 - Lower Secondary 0.357 1.18* 0.113 - Secondary General completed 0.526** 1.38** 0.556* 5.7 Secondary Vocational 0.628** 1.47** 0.741** 18.0 Tertiary Diploma 0.636*** 1.66*** 1.20*** 88.7 University 0.970*** 1.87*** 1.29*** 33.0 R-sq adjusted 0.093 0.141 0.144 N 375 743 2,547 Based on a Mincerian regression with basic controls. Note: Percentage changes were not calculated when premiums for both years were statistically insignificant. Table A3.3: Wage Premia for different levels of education Education Premiums 1998 2002 2007 Change (%) (vs. No Education): (1998-07) Public 25-34 Primary (dropped) (dropped) -0.661 - Lower Secondary (dropped) -0.465 -0.417 - Secondary General completed 0.044 -0.472 -0.405 - Secondary Vocational -0.192 -0.332 -0.177 - Tertiary Diploma 0.217 -0.175 -0.008 - University 0.444* 0.115 0.021 - R-sq adjusted 0.019 0.111 0.060 N 267 401 976 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 53 35-55 Primary -0.132 0.951* 0.358 - Lower Secondary 0.438 1.13** 0.465* 6.2 Secondary General completed 0.869 1.30** 0.819*** -5.7 Secondary Vocational 0.778 1.23** 0.970*** 24.7 Tertiary Diploma 0.785 1.50*** 1.38*** 75.8 University 1.08 1.72*** 1.33*** 23.2 R-sq adjusted 0.108 0.163 0.112 N 500 964 2,404 Based on a Mincerian regression with basic controls. Note: Percentage changes were not calculated when premiums for both years were statistically insignificant. Table A3.4: Wage Premia for different levels of education Education Premiums Change (%) (vs. No Education): 1998 2002 2007 (1998-07) Private 25-34 Primary (dropped) (dropped) -0.378 - Lower Secondary 0.596 0.041 -0.239 - Secondary General completed 0.208 0.007 0.377 - Secondary Vocational 0.471 0.099 0.507* 7.6 0.256 0.418 0.901*** 252.0 Tertiary Diploma 0.939 0.537 1.21*** 28.9 University 0.053 0.080 0.235 R-sq adjusted 117 237 1,572 N 35-55 Primary 2.58*** -0.141 0.000 - Lower Secondary 2.61*** 0.217 0.361* -86.2 Secondary General completed 2.62*** 0.187 0.755*** -71.2 Secondary Vocational 2.38** 0.477 0.888*** -62.7 Tertiary Diploma 2.81*** 0.567 1.42*** -49.5 University 3.21*** 0.862 1.63*** -49.2 R-sq adjusted 0.139 0.096 0.185 N 202 369 2,334 Based on a Mincerian regression with basic controls. Note: Percentage changes were not calculated when premiums for both years were statistically insignificant. 54 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE ANNEX 4: AGGREGATE INSTITUTIONAL AND ENROLLMENT DATA Figure A4.1: The Number of Private and Public TEIs in Mongolia There Are Far More Private HEIs in Mongolia than Public HEIs 160 140 120 100 Public 80 Private 60 40 20 0 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Source: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (MECS), 2008. Figure A4.2.: Tertiary Enrolments in Public and Private TEIs Most Tertiary Students Are Enrolled in Public HEIs 90,000 80,000 70,000 60,000 50,000 Public HEI students 40,000 Private HEI students 30,000 20,000 10,000 0 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Source: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (MECS), 2008. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 55 Figure A4.3: Average Annual Percent Increases in Tertiary Enrolments, by Institution Type ...But Students Are Entering Private HEIs at an Increasing Rate 25.00% 20.00% Annual Rate of 15.00% Change ofStudents in Public HEIs 10.00% Annual Rate of 5.00% Change ofStudents in Private HEIs 0.00% 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Source: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (MECS), 2008. Figure A4.4: The Proportion of Accredited Institutions in Mongolia The Proportion of Accredited HEIs Is Rising 200 150 Total HEIs 100 No. of Accredited 50 HEIs 0 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Source: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (MECS), 2008. 56 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Figure A4.5: The Proportion of Students Studying at an Accredited TEI % of Students Attending an Accredited HEI 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Source: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (MECS), 2007. Figure A4.6: School Enrollment by Age and Gender, 1998 and 2007 Enrollment by Age and Gender, 1998 and 2007 120 100 80 2007, Male 60 2007, Female 1998, Male 40 1998, Female 20 0 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Source: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (MECS), 2009. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 57 Figure A4.7: School Enrollment by Age and Rural/Urban, 1998 and 2007 Enrollment by Age, Rural/Urban, 1998 and 2007 120 100 80 Urban, 1998 60 Rural, 1998 Urban, 2007 40 Rural, 2007 20 0 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Source: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (MECS), 2007. 58 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE ANNEX 5: ENROLLMENT DATA, BY DEGREE LEVEL AND TYPE OF INSTITUTION (As % of Total Enrolled Students) Total all University and 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 College No. of Enrolled Students 5,764 4,771 4,193 3,577 4.7% 3.5% 3.0% 2.4% for Diploma of which: Public 5,326 4,550 4,110 3,537 4.3% 3.3% 2.9% 2.4% Private 438 221 83 40 0.4% 0.2% 0.1% 0.0% No. of Enrolled Students 110,808 125,162 129,452 137,075 89.8% 91.0% 91.1% 91.4% for Bachelor’s Degree of which: Public 72,377 80,275 81,915 87,315 58.6% 58.4% 57.7% 58.2% Private 38,431 44,887 47,537 49,760 31.1% 32.6% 33.5% 33.2% No. of Enrolled Students 5,084 5,626 6,286 7,153 4.1% 4.1% 4.4% 4.8% for Master’s Degree of which: Public 4,573 4,973 5,386 6,107 3.7% 3.6% 3.8% 4.1% Private 511 653 900 1,046 0.4% 0.5% 0.6% 0.7% No. of Enrolled Students 1,790 1,980 2,099 2,110 1.5% 1.4% 1.5% 1.4% for Doctoral Degree of which: Public 1,765 1,957 2,067 2,078 1.4% 1.4% 1.5% 1.4% Private 25 23 32 32 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Total Public Students 84,041 91,755 93,478 99,037 68.1% 66.7% 65.8% 66.1% Total Private Students 39,405 45,784 48,552 50,878 31.9% 33.3% 34.2% 33.9% Total Students 123,446 137,539 142,030 149,915 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 59 60 ANNEX 6: ENROLLMENT BY SUBJECT AND DEGREE LEVEL (As % of Total Enrolled Students) Total Enrollment (All 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 Levels) Education (total) 12,126 12,803 15,094 18,249 9.8% 9.3% 10.6% 12.1% Teacher, pedagogy 12,126 12,803 15,094 18,249 9.8% 9.3% 10.6% 12.1% Humanities (total) 15,926 16,270 13,731 12,869 12.9% 11.8% 9.6% 8.6% Art 3,235 3,204 2,832 2,919 2.6% 2.3% 2.0% 1.9% MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Humanitarian science 12,691 13,066 10,899 9,950 10.2% 9.5% 7.7% 6.6% Social Sciences (total) 47,290 54,401 56,562 57,805 38.2% 39.4% 39.7% 38.5% Social and economics 10,212 12,110 12,303 13,164 8.2% 8.8% 8.6% 8.8% science Information and 1,766 1,868 1,888 1,893 1.4% 1.4% 1.3% 1.3% journalism Business and 28,117 32,438 34,538 34,892 22.7% 23.5% 24.3% 23.2% management Law and judiciary 7,195 7,985 7,833 7,856 5.8% 5.8% 5.5% 5.2% Natural and Physical 8,262 9,020 9,493 10,018 6.7% 6.5% 6.7% 6.7% Sciences (total) Life sciences 1,005 1,176 916 974 0.8% 0.9% 0.6% 0.6% Materialism 2,578 2,582 3,161 3,177 2.1% 1.9% 2.2% 2.1% Math and statistics 1,511 1,569 1,031 921 1.2% 1.1% 0.7% 0.6% Computer science 3,168 3,693 4,385 4,946 2.6% 2.7% 3.1% 3.3% Engineering and 20,117 22,478 22,589 24,416 16.2% 16.3% 15.9% 16.2% Technology (total) Engineering technology 9,902 10,984 11,124 11,611 8.0% 8.0% 7.8% 7.7% Mechanical Engineering 6,566 7,005 7,921 8,700 5.3% 5.1% 5.6% 5.8% Construction and 3,649 4,489 3,544 4,105 2.9% 3.3% 2.5% 2.7% architecture Agriculture (total) 3,854 4,059 4,177 4,115 3.1% 2.9% 2.9% 2.7% Agriculture, forestry, and 3,106 3,089 3,317 3,190 2.5% 2.2% 2.3% 2.1% fishing Veterinary 748 970 860 925 0.6% 0.7% 0.6% 0.6% Medical sciences (total) 9,585 10,735 11,593 13,148 7.7% 7.8% 8.1% 8.7% Medical science 8,651 9,411 10,307 11,735 7.0% 6.8% 7.2% 7.8% Social welfare and supply 934 1,324 1,286 1,413 0.8% 1.0% 0.9% 0.9% Service sector (total) 6,214 6,924 7,986 8,412 5.0% 5.0% 5.6% 5.6% Restaurant, hotel, sports 1,623 2,071 3,071 3,383 1.3% 1.5% 2.2% 2.3% studies Transportation studies 571 651 624 571 0.5% 0.5% 0.4% 0.4% Environmental 1,887 2,007 2,051 2,057 1.5% 1.5% 1.4% 1.4% preservation Police and security 2,133 2,195 2,240 2,401 1.7% 1.6% 1.6% 1.6% Others 450 1,329 1,186 1,294 0.4% 1.0% 0.8% 0.9% Total 123,824 138,019 142,411 150,326 1 1 1 1 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 61 62 (As % of Total Enrolled Bachelor’s Students) Total Enrollment 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 (Bachelor’s Level) Education (total) 11,167 11,902 14,227 17,314 10.0% 9.5% 11.0% 12.6% Teacher, pedagogy 11,167 11,902 14,227 17,314 10.0% 9.5% 11.0% 12.6% Humanities (total) 14,517 15,060 12,829 11,917 13.1% 12.0% 9.9% 8.7% Art 2,850 2,971 2,681 2,733 2.6% 2.4% 2.1% 2.0% Humanitarian science 11,667 12,089 10,148 9,184 10.5% 9.6% 7.8% 6.7% MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Social Sciences (total) 43,323 51,114 52,858 53,669 39.0% 40.7% 40.7% 39.0% Social and economics 9,222 11,518 11,791 12,492 8.3% 9.2% 9.1% 9.1% science Information and 1,708 1,775 1,813 1,809 1.5% 1.4% 1.4% 1.3% journalism Business and 25,635 30,361 32,083 32,091 23.1% 24.2% 24.7% 23.3% management Law and judiciary 6,758 7,460 7,171 7,277 6.1% 5.9% 5.5% 5.3% Natural and Physical 7,589 8,279 8,755 9,241 6.8% 6.6% 6.7% 6.7% Sciences (total) Life sciences 860 968 739 773 0.8% 0.8% 0.6% 0.6% Materialism 2,308 2,234 2,763 2,745 2.1% 1.8% 2.1% 2.0% Math and statistics 1,430 1,516 969 853 1.3% 1.2% 0.7% 0.6% Computer science 2,991 3,561 4,284 4,870 2.7% 2.8% 3.3% 3.5% Engineering and 18,505 20,415 21,052 23,259 16.6% 16.2% 16.2% 16.9% Technology (total) Engineering technology 9,276 10,054 10,288 10,983 8.3% 8.0% 7.9% 8.0% Mechanical Engineering 6,103 6,560 7,497 8,254 5.5% 5.2% 5.8% 6.0% Construction and 3,126 3,801 3,267 4,022 2.8% 3.0% 2.5% 2.9% architecture Agriculture (total) 3,392 3,568 3,545 3,414 3.1% 2.8% 2.7% 2.5% Agriculture, forestry, and 2,781 2,781 2,908 2,755 2.5% 2.2% 2.2% 2.0% fishing Veterinary 611 787 637 659 0.5% 0.6% 0.5% 0.5% Medical sciences (total) 7,193 7,844 8,508 9,585 6.5% 6.2% 6.6% 7.0% Medical science 6,334 6,614 7,287 8,252 5.7% 5.3% 5.6% 6.0% Social welfare and 859 1,230 1,221 1,333 0.8% 1.0% 0.9% 1.0% supply Service sector (total) 5,078 6,251 7,177 8,041 4.6% 5.0% 5.5% 5.8% Restaurant, hotel, 1,623 2,065 3,060 3,383 1.5% 1.6% 2.4% 2.5% sports studies Transportation studies 216 305 276 568 0.2% 0.2% 0.2% 0.4% Environmental 1,840 1,937 1,911 1,903 1.7% 1.5% 1.5% 1.4% preservation Police and security 1,399 1,944 1,930 2,187 1.3% 1.5% 1.5% 1.6% Others 422 1,209 882 1,046 0.4% 1.0% 0.7% 0.8% Total 111,186 125,642 129,833 137,486 1 1 1 1 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 63 64 (As % of Total Enrolled Master’s Students) Total Enrollment 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 (Master’s Level) Education (total) 578 507 572 663 11.4% 9.0% 9.1% 9.3% Teacher, pedagogy 578 507 572 663 11.4% 9.0% 9.1% 9.3% Humanities (total) 693 593 518 638 13.6% 10.5% 8.2% 8.9% Art 208 101 82 91 4.1% 1.8% 1.3% 1.3% Humanitarian science 485 492 436 547 9.5% 8.7% 6.9% 7.6% MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Social Sciences (total) 2,192 2,510 2,812 3,234 43.1% 44.6% 44.7% 45.2% Social and economics 653 407 300 440 12.8% 7.2% 4.8% 6.2% science Information and 32 48 32 24 0.6% 0.9% 0.5% 0.3% journalism Business and 1,147 1,612 1,936 2,297 22.6% 28.7% 30.8% 32.1% management Law and judiciary 360 443 544 473 7.1% 7.9% 8.7% 6.6% Natural and Physical 325 400 448 513 6.4% 7.1% 7.1% 7.2% Sciences (total) Life sciences 75 124 110 128 1.5% 2.2% 1.7% 1.8% Materialism 146 196 250 293 2.9% 3.5% 4.0% 4.1% Math and statistics 39 27 34 42 0.8% 0.5% 0.5% 0.6% Computer science 65 53 54 50 1.3% 0.9% 0.9% 0.7% Engineering and 553 661 634 628 10.9% 11.7% 10.1% 8.8% Technology (total) Engineering technology 258 343 327 371 5.1% 6.1% 5.2% 5.2% Mechanical Engineering 190 202 217 214 3.7% 3.6% 3.5% 3.0% Construction and 105 116 90 43 2.1% 2.1% 1.4% 0.6% architecture Agriculture (total) 299 280 370 405 5.9% 5.0% 5.9% 5.7% Agriculture, forestry, 246 216 285 297 4.8% 3.8% 4.5% 4.2% and fishing Veterinary 53 64 85 108 1.0% 1.1% 1.4% 1.5% Medical sciences (total) 342 428 470 624 6.7% 7.6% 7.5% 8.7% Medical science 302 379 416 556 5.9% 6.7% 6.6% 7.8% Social welfare and 40 49 54 68 0.8% 0.9% 0.9% 1.0% supply Service sector (total) 74 127 174 200 1.5% 2.3% 2.8% 2.8% Restaurant, hotel, 6 0 0 0.0% 0.1% 0.0% 0.0% sports studies Transportation studies 1 1 3 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Environmental 42 57 106 129 0.8% 1.0% 1.7% 1.8% preservation Police and security 32 63 67 68 0.6% 1.1% 1.1% 1.0% Others 28 120 288 248 0.6% 2.1% 4.6% 3.5% Total 5,084 5,626 6,286 7,153 1 1 1 1 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 65 66 (As % of Total Enrolled Doctoral Students) Total Enrollment 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 (Doctoral Level) Education (total) 139 159 150 138 7.8% 8.0% 7.1% 6.5% Teacher, pedagogy 139 159 150 138 7.8% 8.0% 7.1% 6.5% Humanities (total) 317 287 274 269 17.7% 14.5% 13.1% 12.7% Art 91 47 44 50 5.1% 2.4% 2.1% 2.4% Humanitarian science 226 240 230 219 12.6% 12.1% 11.0% 10.4% MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Social Sciences (total) 460 485 564 637 25.7% 24.5% 26.9% 30.2% Social and economics 230 185 212 228 12.8% 9.3% 10.1% 10.8% science Information and 16 16 15 0.0% 0.8% 0.8% 0.7% journalism Business and 153 202 218 288 8.5% 10.2% 10.4% 13.6% management Law and judiciary 77 82 118 106 4.3% 4.1% 5.6% 5.0% Natural and Physical 276 270 259 249 15.4% 13.6% 12.3% 11.8% Sciences (total) Life sciences 70 84 67 73 3.9% 4.2% 3.2% 3.5% Materialism 124 139 148 139 6.9% 7.0% 7.1% 6.6% Math and statistics 42 26 28 26 2.3% 1.3% 1.3% 1.2% Computer science 40 21 16 11 2.2% 1.1% 0.8% 0.5% Engineering and 327 437 455 439 18.3% 22.1% 21.7% 20.8% Technology (total) Engineering technology 105 225 256 213 5.9% 11.4% 12.2% 10.1% Mechanical Engineering 165 127 148 186 9.2% 6.4% 7.1% 8.8% Construction and 57 85 51 40 3.2% 4.3% 2.4% 1.9% architecture Agriculture (total) 97 106 125 120 5.4% 5.4% 6.0% 5.7% Agriculture, forestry, 79 78 88 79 4.4% 3.9% 4.2% 3.7% and fishing Veterinary 18 28 37 41 1.0% 1.4% 1.8% 1.9% Medical sciences (total) 148 193 158 185 8.3% 9.7% 7.5% 8.8% Medical science 148 183 147 173 8.3% 9.2% 7.0% 8.2% Social welfare and 10 11 12 0.0% 0.5% 0.5% 0.6% supply Service sector (total) 26 43 98 73 1.5% 2.2% 4.7% 3.5% Restaurant, hotel, 0 0 0 0 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% sports studies Transportation studies 0 0 23 0 0.0% 0.0% 1.1% 0.0% Environmental 5 11 34 25 0.3% 0.6% 1.6% 1.2% preservation Police and security 21 32 41 48 1.2% 1.6% 2.0% 2.3% Others 0 0 16 0 0.0% 0.0% 0.8% 0.0% Total 1,790 1,980 2,099 2,110 1 1 1 1 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 67 68 ANNEX 7: STUDENTS SUPPORTED BY FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE, BY DEGREE LEVEL AND INSTITUTIONAL TYPE (As % of Total Enrolled Students) All Levels - Bachelor’s, Master’s, 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 and Doctoral Public Institutions No. of Students Who Benefit from 12,215 12,129 12,377 11,418 9.9% 8.8% 8.7% 7.6% State Administration Law MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE No. of Students Who Received 9,245 8,643 7,835 6,866 7.5% 6.3% 5.5% 4.6% State Training Fund Loans No. of Students Who Received 13,951 14,213 13,662 10,855 11.3% 10.3% 9.6% 7.2% State Training Fund Grants No. of Students Who Received 406 437 538 241 0.3% 0.3% 0.4% 0.2% Other University Funding No. of Students Who Paid Their 46,226 46,226 57,982 49,541 37.3% 33.5% 40.7% 33.0% Own Expenses Private Institutions No. of Students Who Benefit from 5,576 6,084 6,088 5,688 4.5% 4.4% 4.3% 3.8% State Administration Law No. of Students Who Received 2,808 2,760 3,186 3,244 2.3% 2.0% 2.2% 2.2% State Training Fund Loans No. of Students Who Received 3,226 3,786 3,754 3,481 2.6% 2.7% 2.6% 2.3% State Training Fund Grants No. of Students Who Received 591 725 719 719 0.5% 0.5% 0.5% 0.5% Other University Funding No. of Students Who Paid Their 27,000 32,157 32,015 34,210 21.8% 23.3% 22.5% 22.8% Own Expenses Total (Public and Private Institutions) No. of Students Who Benefit from 17,791 18,213 18,465 17,106 14.4% 13.2% 13.0% 11.4% State Administration Law No. of Students Who Received 12,053 11,403 11,021 10,110 9.7% 8.3% 7.7% 6.7% State Training Fund Loans No. of Students Who Received 17,177 17,999 17,416 14,336 13.9% 13.0% 12.2% 9.5% State Training Fund Grants No. of Students Who Received 997 1,162 1,257 960 0.8% 0.8% 0.9% 0.6% Other University Funding No. of Students Who Paid Their 73,226 78,383 89,997 83,751 59.1% 56.8% 63.2% 55.7% Own Expenses Total Enrolled Students 123,824 138,019 142,411 150,326 1 1 1 1 (As % of Total Enrolled Doctoral Students) Doctoral Level 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 Public Institutions No. of Students Who Benefit from 31 22 0 0 1.7% 1.1% 0.0% 0.0% State Administration Law No. of Students Who Received 136 110 75 67 7.6% 5.6% 3.6% 3.2% State Training Fund Loans No. of Students Who Received 0 0 0 0 State Training Fund Grants No. of Students Who Received 2 27 48 46 0.1% 1.4% 2.3% 2.2% Other University Funding No. of Students Who Paid Their 1,581 1,781 1,939 1,823 88.3% 89.9% 92.4% 86.4% Own Expenses MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 69 70 Private Institutions No. of Students Who Benefit from 0 0 0 0 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% State Administration Law No. of Students Who Received 0 0 0 0 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% State Training Fund Loans No. of Students Who Received 0 0 0 0 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% State Training Fund Grants No. of Students Who Received 1 1 1 1 0.1% 0.1% 0.0% 0.0% Other University Funding MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE No. of Students Who Paid Their 24 23 29 31 1.3% 1.2% 1.4% 1.5% Own Expenses Total (Public and Private Institutions) No. of Students Who Benefit from 31 22 0 0 1.7% 1.1% 0.0% 0.0% State Administration Law No. of Students Who Received 136 110 75 67 7.6% 5.6% 3.6% 3.2% State Training Fund Loans No. of Students Who Received 0 0 0 0 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% State Training Fund Grants No. of Students Who Received 3 28 49 47 0.2% 1.4% 2.3% 2.2% Other University Funding No. of Students Who Paid Their 1,605 1,804 1,968 1,854 89.7% 91.1% 93.8% 87.9% Own Expenses Total Enrolled Doctoral Students 1,790 1,980 2,099 2,110 (As % of Total Enrolled Master’s Students) Master’s Level 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 Public Institutions No. of Students Who Benefit from 0 0 33 39 0.0% 0.0% 0.5% 0.5% State Administration Law No. of Students Who Received 196 161 142 125 3.9% 2.9% 2.3% 1.7% State Training Fund Loans No. of Students Who Received 0 20 30 36 0.0% 0.4% 0.5% 0.5% State Training Fund Grants No. of Students Who Received 54 46 59 73 1.1% 0.8% 0.9% 1.0% Other University Funding No. of Students Who Paid Their 4,204 4,622 5,024 5,646 82.7% 82.2% 79.9% 78.9% Own Expenses Private Institutions No. of Students Who Benefit from 0 0 3 2 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% State Administration Law No. of Students Who Received 13 2 0 0 0.3% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% State Training Fund Loans No. of Students Who Received 0 0 0 0 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% State Training Fund Grants No. of Students Who Received 21 7 41 36 0.4% 0.1% 0.7% 0.5% Other University Funding No. of Students Who Paid Their 428 635 849 1,005 8.4% 11.3% 13.5% 14.1% Own Expenses MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 71 72 Total (Public and Private Institutions) No. of Students Who Benefit from 0 0 36 41 0.0% 0.0% 0.6% 0.6% State Administration Law No. of Students Who Received 209 163 142 125 4.1% 2.9% 2.3% 1.7% State Training Fund Loans No. of Students Who Received 0 20 30 36 0.0% 0.4% 0.5% 0.5% State Training Fund Grants No. of Students Who Received 75 53 100 109 1.5% 0.9% 1.6% 1.5% Other University Funding MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE No. of Students Who Paid Their 4,632 5,257 5,873 6,651 91.1% 93.4% 93.4% 93.0% Own Expenses Total Enrolled Master’s Students 5,084 5,626 6,286 7,153 (As % of Total Enrolled Bachelor’s Students) Bachelor’s Level 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 Public Institutions No. of Students Who Benefit from 12,184 12,107 12,344 11,379 11.0% 9.7% 9.5% 8.3% State Administration Law No. of Students Who Received 8,913 8,372 7,618 6,674 8.0% 6.7% 5.9% 4.9% State Training Fund Loans No. of Students Who Received 13,951 14,193 13,632 10,819 12.6% 11.3% 10.5% 7.9% State Training Fund Grants No. of Students Who Received 350 364 431 122 0.3% 0.3% 0.3% 0.1% Other University Funding No. of Students Who Paid Their 40,441 39,823 51,019 42,072 36.5% 31.8% 39.4% 30.7% Own Expenses Private Institutions No. of Students Who Benefit from 5,576 6,084 6,085 5,686 5.0% 4.9% 4.7% 4.1% State Administration Law No. of Students Who Received 2,795 2,758 3,186 3,244 2.5% 2.2% 2.5% 2.4% State Training Fund Loans No. of Students Who Received 3,226 3,786 3,754 3,481 2.9% 3.0% 2.9% 2.5% State Training Fund Grants No. of Students Who Received 569 717 677 682 0.5% 0.6% 0.5% 0.5% Other University Funding No. of Students Who Paid Their 26,548 31,499 31,137 33,174 24.0% 25.2% 24.1% 24.2% Own Expenses Total (Public and Private Institutions) No. of Students Who Benefit from 17,760 18,191 18,429 17,065 16.0% 14.5% 14.2% 12.4% State Administration Law No. of Students Who Received 11,708 11,130 10,804 9,918 10.6% 8.9% 8.3% 7.2% State Training Fund Loans No. of Students Who Received 17,177 17,979 17,386 14,300 15.5% 14.4% 13.4% 10.4% State Training Fund Grants No. of Students Who Received 919 1,081 1,108 804 0.8% 0.9% 0.9% 0.6% Other University Funding No. of Students Who Paid Their 66,989 71,322 82,156 75,246 60.5% 57.0% 63.5% 54.9% Own Expenses Total Enrolled Bachelor’s Students 110,808 125,162 129,452 137,075 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 73 74 ANNEX 8: FACULTY QUALIFICATIONS (As % of Total Number of Teachers) Public Institutions 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 No. of Faculty with PhD Degree 933 933 1127 1081 14.8% 14.8% 16.6% 15.8% No. of Faculty with Master’s 2770 2770 2792 2946 43.9% 43.9% 41.2% 42.9% Degree No. of Faculty with Bachelor’s 476 476 538 496 7.5% 7.5% 7.9% 7.2% Degree MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE No. of Faculty with Diploma 8 8 5 0 0.1% 0.1% 0.1% 0.0% Private Institutions 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 No. of Faculty with PhD Degree 326 326 331 344 5.2% 5.2% 4.9% 5.0% No. of Faculty with Master’s 1355 1355 1516 1602 21.5% 21.5% 22.4% 23.3% Degree No. of Faculty with Bachelor’s 431 431 458 389 6.8% 6.8% 6.8% 5.7% Degree No. of Faculty with Diploma 10 10 11 4 0.2% 0.2% 0.2% 0.1% Total 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 No. of Faculty with PhD Degree 1259 1259 1458 1425 20.0% 20.0% 21.5% 20.8% No. of Faculty with Master’s 4125 4125 4308 4548 65.4% 65.4% 63.6% 66.3% Degree No. of Faculty with Bachelor’s 907 907 996 885 14.4% 14.4% 14.7% 12.9% Degree No. of Faculty with Diploma 18 18 16 4 0.3% 0.3% 0.2% 0.1% ANNEX 9: RECENT RESEARCH EXCELLENCE INITIATIVES WORLDWIDE Country/ Name of Number of target institutions Resources Investment region initiative and eligibility criteria allocated horizon Africa NEPAD / Blair Launched in 2006 Commission 1) Revitalize Africa’s institutions 1) US$500 for Africa of higher education million a year, (proposed)a over 10 years 2) Develop centers of excellence 2) Up to US$3 in science and technology, billion over 10 including African institutes of years technology Canada Canada Networks 23 currently funded Networks C$77.4 million Operating since of Centers of of Centers of Excellence per year since 1988; Excellenceb 16 previously funded Networks 1999 permanent C$47.3 million a program since year in 1997–99 1997 C$437 million in total in 1988–98 Canada Canada Global Four priorities in the Federal C$21 million 2009–12 Excellence Science and Technology Research Chairsc Strategy: the environment, natural resources and energy, health, and information and communication technologies Chile Chile Millennium Groups of researchers 3 science Every 5 years for Science Initiatived institutes: US$1 nuclei and every million a year for 10 years for 10 years; institutes 5–12 science nuclei: US$250,000 a year; US$25 million in total in 2000–04 China China 211 107 higher-education Y 36.82 billion Launched in 1996: Projecte institutions during 1995– 1996–2000 (1st 2005 round) 2001–06 (2nd round) 2007–11 (3rd round) MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 75 Country/ Name of Number of target institutions Resources Investment region initiative and eligibility criteria allocated horizon China China 985 39 research universities Y 27.07 billion Launched in 1999: Projectf (1st round) 1999–2001 (1st round) 2004–07 (2nd round) China Chinese Academy Mathematics and physics 15 Y 4.80 billion (1st 1998–2000 (1st of Sciences (CAS) Chemistry and chemical round) round) Institutesg engineering 12 2001–05 (2nd Biological sciences 20 round) Earth sciences 19 2006–10 Technological sciences 21 (3rd round) Others 2 Denmark Denmark Funds to be allocated to US$1.9 billion Launched in 2006 (Globalization research universities on a between 2007 Fund) competitive basis and 2012 Europe European TBD – determined by structure Based on number 2007–13 Commission, of research proposals (RFPs) of RFPs with Framework a “center of Programme 7 excellence� (FP7)h structure Overall FP7 budget is €50.5 billion covering 2007–13i France “Opération Develop 10 regional centers of €5 billion Launched in 2008 Campus�j excellence in higher education and research. Overall, the centers will regroup 38 universities and research organizations, representing 340,000 students and 13,000 researchers. Germany Germany 40 graduate schools US$2.3 billion in Five-year funding; Excellence 30 clusters of excellence total two rounds: 2006 Initiative 2006k (universities and private sector) and 2007 10 top-level research universities 76 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Country/ Name of initiative Number of target institutions Resources Investment horizon region and eligibility criteria allocated Japan Japan Top-30 31 higher-education US$150 million Five-year funding; Program institutions / year (program launched in 2002; (Centers Of total: 37.8 billion 3 rounds: 2002, Excellence for yen) 2003, and 2004 21st-Century Plan)l Japan Japan Global 50–75 centers funded per 50 million–500 5 years; Centers of year (5 new fields of study million yen per launched in 2007 Excellence each year) center per year Programm (~US$400,000– US$4 million) Republic of Brain Korea 21 • Science and technology: US$1.17 billion in 7 years; Korea Programn 11 universities total two rounds in • Humanities and social 1999 sciences: 11 universities • Leading regional universities: 38 universities • Professional graduate schools in 11 universities Republic of Korea Science 1) Science research centers 1) US$64.2 million 1) up to 9 years Korea and Engineering (SRCs) / engineering research / year 2) up to 9 years Foundation centers (ERCs): up to 65 3) up to 7 years (KOSEF)o centers 2) Medical science and All 3 programs engineering research centers 2) US$7 million / launched in FY (MRCs): 18 centers year 2002 or FY 2003 3) National core research centers (NCRCs): 6 centers funded in 2006 3) US$10.8 million / year Russian Russian Establish a network of high- n.a. Under Federation Federation’s status federal institutions consideration (two “Federal that are specialized research pilot universities Universities�p universities and lifelong were established in vocational centers 2007) Taiwan Taiwan Selection and financial US$400 million 4 years (China) Development support of internationally Plan for University leading fields Research Excellenceq MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 77 Country/ Name of initiative Number of target Resources Investment region institutions and eligibility allocated horizon criteria United U.K. Funding for Universities with the highest US$8.63 billion Kingdom Excellent Unitsr marks after the research disbursed after 5 years for assessment exercise (RAE) 2001 RAE research council– funded centerss Two rounds: 1996 and 2001; 2008 RAE scheduledt United States, Science Public-private partnership US$135 million + Annually since Arizona Foundation to strengthen scientific, US$135 million 2006 Arizonau engineering, and medical (1:1 matching) research United States, California University-industry US$400 million + Annually since California Institutes of partnerships to address state US$800 million 2000 Science and problems (2:1 matching) Innovationv United States, North Dakota Public-private centers US$50 million + Annually since North Dakota Centers of focusing on local needs US$100 million 2007 Excellencew (2:1 matching) United States, Washington State Bioscience research that US$350 million 10 years since Washington Life Sciences provides economic and 2005 Discovery Fundx health benefits United States, Georgia Research Public-private partnership to US$30 million Annually since Georgia Alliancey recruit eminent scholars to 1990 Georgia universities United States, Indiana 21st- Academic and commercial US$26 million Annually since Indiana Century Research sector partnerships 1999 and Technology Fundz United States, Kentucky’s “Buck Endowed chairs for top US$350 million Since 1997 Kentucky for Brains�aa talent 78 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE Country/ Name of initiative Number of target institutions Resources Investment region and eligibility criteria allocated horizon United States, Ohio’s Third Establishment of centers of US$1.6 billion 10 years since Ohio Frontierbb innovation as joint initiatives 2003 of universities and private research organizations United States, Oklahoma Nanotechnology research US$29 million Annually since Oklahoma Center for the 1987 Advancement of Science and Technologycc Sources: Salmi, 2009. Note: US$ = U.S. dollars, C$ = Canadian dollars, Y = Chinese yuan, € = euros, n.a. = not available. a. http://www.eurodad.org/articles/default.aspx?id=595. b. http://www.nce.gc.ca/. c. www.budget.gc.ca/2008/speech-discours/speech-discours-eng.asp. d. http://www.msi-sig.org/msi/current.html. e. Ministerial Office of 211 Project (2007), Report on 211 Project (1995–2005). Beijing: Higher Education Press. f. N. C. Liu and L. Zhou (2007), Building Research University for Achieving the Goal of an Innovative Country. Beijing: China Renmin University Press. g.http://www.itps.se/Archive/Documents/Swedish/Publikationer/Rapporter/Arbetsrapporter%20(R)/R2007/R2007_ 001%20FoU-finansiarer.pdf . Chinese Academy of Science, http://www.cas.ac.cn/html/books/o6122/e1/04/tongzhi/ tz004.htm; http://baike.baidu.com/view/229786.htm. h. http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/pdf/centres.pdf. i. http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/what_en.html#funding. j. http://www.france-science.org/Operation-Campus-6-projects-kept?var_recherche=operation%20campus; http:// www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20080613092922742. k. http://www.dfg.de/en/research_funding/coordinated_programmes/excellence_initiative/. l. http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-21coe/index.html. m. http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-globalcoe/index.html; http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-globalcoe/data/application_guidelines.pdf; http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-globalcoe/data/review_guidelines.pdf. n. http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/APCITY/UNPAN015416.pdf; http://www.bk21.or.kr/datas/english_ver.htm. o. http://www.kosef.re.kr/english_new/programs/programs_01_04.html. p. http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20081024094454199. q. http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/APCITY/UNPAN015416.pdf. r. http://www.hefce.ac.uk/research/funding/. s. http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/resfunding.htm. MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE 79 t. http://www.rae.ac.uk/. u. http://www.sfaz.org/. v. http://www.ucop.edu/california-institutes/about/about.htm. w. http://governor.state.nd.us/media/speeches/040325.html. x. http://www.lsdfa.org/home.html. y. http://www.gra.org/homepage.asp. z. http://www.21fund.org/. aa. http://www.wku.edu/IA/bucks/index.html. bb. http://www.odod.ohio.gov/tech/program.htm. cc. http://www.ocast.state.ok.us/ 80 MONGOLIA HIGH EDUCATION POLICY NOTE