Mongolia: Higher Education Reform Project

Education / Tertiary

- The project has supported capacity building of 15,445 (10,100 or 65.39% are female) administrators, managers, higher education specialists, experts, teachers, and faculty members MECSS, NCEA and selected HEIs in topics such as governance, management, finance and accounting, learning and teaching, faculty development, accreditation, research policy, National Qualification Framework & credit system, partnership, higher education responsiveness to labor market, and gender equality in higher education, research methodology, open and distance education, higher education management information system and CDIO standards' implementation, which supports higher education reform.

- 347 (187 or 53.89% are female) policy makers, administrators and teachers participated in the 45 overseas training, workshops and study tours in areas such as accreditation, governance, management and financing of HEIs, methodology of CDIO standard and gender equality.

- 41 trainings on CDIO approaches were conducted for over 2,291 managers, teachers and staff from 6 private, 10 state UB HEIs and 13 rural HEIs.

- Five distance education centers were established at the universities in Ulaanbaatar and rural provinces to improve access and quality of higher education for rural students and faculty.

Quality and relevance of higher education programs improved

Effectiveness of HEIs' management and financing improved

Access to higher education improved

- The project has significantly contributed to the capacity building of the higher education institutes (HEI). About 405 (253 or 62.4% female) administrators, managers, faculty members attended seven trainings on the topics related to governance, financing and management of higher education, organized under the project. 142 (89 or 62.7% female) administrators, managers and faculty members from the MECSS and HEIs participated in overseas trainings and study tours on topics related to higher education governance, management and financing. 237 (136 or 58.9% female) senior management staff including presidents of public and private HEIs, participated in the training on governance and leadership. 100 (44% female) participants attended a consultation meeting on HE governance organized in collaboration with the Parliament Standing Committee on Social Protection, Education, Culture and Science.

- Five distance education centers were established with programs for outreach to at least 2,000 teachers and students of HEIs (50% of users are female). The furniture, tele-conferencing and remote monitoring tools and software were supplied to five distance education centers at MSUE, Arkhangai branch school of MSUE, Khovd University, Dornod University, Zavkhan branch school of NUM during 2015 and 2016. The individual consultants have worked assisting on development of e-Learning Platform, implementation of e-Learning at the distance education centers, and coordination of the planned trainings by the distance education centers. In 2018-2019, 2015 (1376 or 68.3% are female) teachers were trained by two-day face-to-face and two-month online trainings through the distance education centers.

- The project supported the MECSS in developing the Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS) in two phases. The first phase was implemented from January 2018 to June 2019 and accepted by MECSS in August 2019. Under the second phase commenced in September 2019, the consultants team has been further developing the HEMIS. The additional subsystems and modules being developed, but also the system maintenance and administration is being handled

- 13 partnership grants were awarded to 104 researchers from 6 HEIs with aim to promote the industry and university partnership. MUST and MNUE implemented joint research and training programs with MIT, USA and University of Oulu, Finland in 2015-2018. MUST started collaboration with University of British Columbia, Canada to implement Integrated interdisciplinary mineral resource education in Mongolia' from June 2018.

- The project supported improving the higher education accreditation system. The regulatory framework for the National Center for Education Accreditation (NCEA) is aligned with the international standards; organizational structure and working committees are renewed; the experts were trained; and support were provided for the international and national accreditation of the programs. The project supported international accreditation of 20 programs. The revised Charter of Education Accreditation Body was approved by the Government resolution of 5 September 2018. It enables the NCEA to register and authorize foreign and national accreditation institutes and evaluate their activities. The Asian Pacific Quality Assurance Network (APQN)'s decision to accept the NCEA onto the Asia-Pacific Quality Register (APQR) with validity period for five years until July 2024, was issued in July 2019.

- The methodology for Labor market study, Employer satisfaction survey and Graduates tracer studies were developed by the project for the HEIs, and all the HEIs were trained.

- The project supported the Education Evaluation Center (EEC) to conduct the HEI program assessment in May 2019.

- To strengthen research capacity of HEIs, 60 research grants were awarded to 312 (152 or 49% were female) teachers and students from 12 HEIs in 2016 and 2018. In total 18 institutional development grants were awarded to 130 researchers from 6 public HEIs and 2 private HEIs in 2015 and 2018. Currently 7 research and 4 institutional development grants for rural HEIs to address local community problems and support local development, are being implemented by 129 (79 or 61.2% are female) teachers and graduate students.

- The project supported application of the CDIO principles in the university programs. The application of basic CDIO stage was implemented in 2016-2018 and achieved the following: (i) renovating, furnishing and equipping 8 CDIO workshops; (ii) three engineering programs of MUST namely, _Industrial automation program_, _Textile technology program_, _Telecommunication program_ were revised in accordance with the CDIO standards; (iii) 24 master trainers were prepared through series of internal and external trainings_; (iv) a guideline for implementation of CDIO in HEIs was developed in August 2017; and (vi) a set of 6 training manuals were printed and distributed to HEIs. A total of 160 faculty members of MUST, NUM and MULS became direct beneficiaries from joint training seminars organized in cooperation with Singapore Polytechnic, and around 2291 teachers of 96 public and private HEIs were trained on CDIO standards and methodologies. 120 (68 or 56.6% are female) faculty members, consultants and MECSS officials participated in twelve (12) overseas CDIO events, including regional meetings.

- The second stage of CDIO initiative - Advancing CDIO was implemented from April 2018 to April 2019. Six participating universities are MUST, NUM, MULS, MNUE, MNUAC and MNDU. A total of 260 (149 or 57.31% are female) educators and administrators were trained through 8 training workshops. Digital learning contents and materials for CDIO approaches were developed and disseminated. At the end of the Advancing CDIO stage, 7 training programs of MUST, NULS, MNUE, MNUAC and MNDU, which applied the Advancing CDIO approach, were assessed by a joint working group of MECSS and the Temasek Foundation. Equipment and furniture were provided to 6 participating universities in Q1 2020.

- The project also supports improving the physical learning and teaching environment at HEIs. The office furniture was supplied to 7 rural HEIs in 2014. The minor renovation was completed at 8 HEIs in 2013-2014. Since the project commencement, the laboratory equipment and tools have been supplied to about 20 HEIs including recently signed contracts for supply of laboratory equipment to 3 universities (Ulaanbaatar University, Commerce and Business University and Khovd University).