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MongoliaHigher Education
Mongolian State University in Ulaanbaatar was founded in 1942
(as Choybalsan University) with three departments: education,
medicine, and veterinary medicine. The faculty was Russian, as
was the language of instruction. In 1983 the university's
engineering institute and Russian-language teacher training
institute became separate establishments, called the Polytechnic
Institute and the Institute of Russian Language, respectively.
The Polytechnic Institute, with 5,000 students, concentrated on
engineering and mining. Mongolian State University, with about
4,000 students, taught pure sciences and mathematics, social
science, economics, and philology. More than 90 percent of the
faculty were Mongolian; teachers also came from the Soviet Union,
Eastern Europe, France, and Britain. Much instruction was in
Russian, reflecting the lack of Mongol-language texts in advanced
and specialized fields.
Besides Mongolian State University there were seven other
institutions of higher learning: the Institute of Medicine, the
Institute of Agriculture, the Institute of Economics, the State
Pedological Institute, the Polytechnic Institute, the Institute
of Russian Language, and the Institute of Physical Culture. In
the summer, all students had a work semester, in which they
helped with the harvest, formed "shock work" teams for
construction projects, or went to work in the Soviet Union or
another Comecon country. In early 1989, the educational
authorities announced that third-year and fourth-year engineering
students would be told which enterprise they would be assigned to
after graduation, so that their training could be focused with
practical ends in mind.
Data as of June 1989
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