Homogenization of higher education institution on the face of sustainable development in Mongolia

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday IV)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Role of higher education in society

Proposal

Many institutions across the globe claim that they plan to become world-class universities by a certain date or that they have already achieved this status (Birnbaum, 2007). The phenomenon of building a “world class university” is evident in countries such as China, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Denmark, Finland and so on. For instance, Finland reformed its higher education system by merging 20 universities into 15 to 16 universities. The purpose of this action is to build a “world class university” with the account of improving efficiency and effectiveness of higher education institutions in Finland. In Asia, Chinese government has put an immense effort to build a “world class university” by implementing policies such as “985 scheme.” It aimed at building a “world class university” in China and has begun its implementation since 1999. The government and higher education institutions both implement their strategies to build and become a “world class university.” The government nurtures key universities with favorable policies, administration and resources to build world class universities whereas the key universities equip themselves with talented human resources, boosting research activities and internationalizing campuses. Similarly, higher education institutions in Mongolia have been experiencing reforms and changes to pursue “world-class” higher education on the face of the sustainable development. The policies to implement sustainable development strategies at the higher education level have been reflected on the institutional as well as operational level of the universities in Mongolia. This study analyses how higher education institution in Mongolia has become isomorphic on the face of the sustainable development policies and strategies.

Significance of the study is that it will add to the literature around the discussion of sustainable development policies and strategies impact on higher education systems with the focus of developing economy context. Second, the implication of this study is highly important for Mongolian higher education in terms of policy designing at national and institutional level within the framework of sustainable development, as well as building a “world class university” through the policies and strategies of sustainable development.

Drawing from previous literature, we can conclude that it is little researched on how higher education institutions in a developing country are pursuing “world class universities” or research intensive universities within the context of sustainable development. As Altbach (2007) postulated that developing countries need research universities but their goals will be different than those in advanced economies. For developing countries, research universities are especially rare, and yet they are especially important as key ingredients for economic and social progress (Altbach, 2007). The sustainable development goals can serve for those countries and their higher education institutions in Mongolia to guide how to build their nation with higher education, research and development on the face of sustainable development. Hence, this study examines the policies and strategies of sustainable development and the process of the institutional changes of one higher education institution through the lens of isomorphism.
This study applies neo-institutional theory of isomorphism as its theoretical lens. Theory of new institutionalism, isomorphism explains the institutional changes that force the institution to become similar with each other. It has a power to explain homogenization process of higher education institutions on the face of the sustainable development. The current changing process of Mongolian higher education plows a fertile ground for examining isomorphic changes to become a research university – character of world class university within the context of sustainable development. In other words, it can help to examine isomorphic or homogenization process of a Mongolian higher education institution to become a research university.
The process of homogenization is isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), the process of organizations becoming similar and homogenous. Once disparate organizations in the same line of business are structured into an actual field (by competition, the state or the professions), powerful forces emerge that lead them to become more similar to one another (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). One of the field powerful forces in this study is policies and strategies of sustainable development that are shaping current higher education system in Mongolia.
The study employs qualitative approach to make analysis on the changing nature of the higher education institution in terms of becoming isomorphic and homogeneous on the face of the sustainable development context. The study has collected numerous government policy papers and documents as well as case university reports, documents and other written sources. The thematic analysis has been conducted and the preliminary findings are presented below.

Institutional mergers became common to achieve organizational scale and to absorb academically weaker institutions within larger units (Balan, 2006:293). In 2010, Mongolian government passed the bill to restructure Mongolian higher education system into a more manageable way and differentiate the role and mission of higher education system. The restructure of higher education institutions in Mongolia has merged 42 higher education institutions and built 15 higher education institutions (http://www.mongolnews.mn/i/610). For instance, University of Ulaanbaatar, Institute of Commerce and Business and Institute of Customs and Economics were merged into the National University of Mongolia from 1 July, 2010. This step of structure based reform is considered to enhance the quality of higher education, to allocate funding efficiently such as building a new campus for the national universities. This top down reform in Mongolian higher education system can be considered as the initial step support the few state higher education institutions and further to equip them to build “world class university” on the face of the sustainable development.

Even though there is not much support from the government to build research intensive “world class university,” a few state higher education institutions attempt to change itself at the organizational level to catch up with the global trend of higher education. The case university was used to be oriented to prepare human resources to the society and teaching dominated institution. Recently, the university has been shifting itself in building research intensive university. The university has been changing its administrative pattern into corporate governance system modeling after American model of research universities by eliminating former Soviet Union governance system.

Author

• Zoljargal Dembereldorj, National University of Mongolia