Enabling Access to Higher Education in Post-socialist Mongolia: Empirical Results for Implementation and Implications of Government Policies

Description Special thanks to Christy Kelsey Zigler for her guidance and feedback on the statistical models and results. Thank you to the Student Research Grant of the School of Education, University of Pittsburgh, part of which supported this study. This publication represents only the views of the author; any errors are only her own.

Abstract This quantitative study examines the effectiveness of government financial assistance policies in access to higher education in post-socialist Mongolia as of 2012, using probabilistic, cross-sectional Household Social and Economic Survey data. Using a six-subscale composite socioeconomic status (SES) variable, the study examines the effect of SES on government financial assistance, relationship between the State Budget Organization employee status on the assistance and the SES levels. Cross tabulations and multinomial regression models were applied in the analyses. The study reveals that the design and implementation of the policies were not entirely targeted at the poor and marginalized, and demonstrates a rather flattened-out distribution of the limited resource. It demonstrates how the policies reinforced the status quo and favored those who were not the ones with the most needs.