Genevieve Low conducted research on Mongolian students' educational and career aspirations as part of her Master's thesis. She interviewed 12th grade students from schools in Ulaanbaatar, a provincial center, and a rural soum. Students had diverse career goals but all planned to attend university. Major influences were personal interests and family. However, rural students faced greater barriers due to lack of resources like the internet and extracurricular activities available to urban students. Further longitudinal research is recommended to better understand barriers students may face in achieving their goals. Disparities in opportunities between urban and rural youth could negatively impact Mongolia's development.

1. Mongolian Students’ Aspirations and Barriers to Achieving Them
I. Introduction
Good morning. My name is Genevieve Low, and I’m pleased to be presenting my
Master’s research on Mongolian students’ career and educational aspirations to you today.
From 2012 to 2014 I was a Peace Corps volunteer in a soum in Selenge aimag. As an English
teacher and community development volunteer in a small secondary school, I observed my
older students as they made decisions about their future, and had many questions about how
their decisions were made. Now a Master’s student at UCL Institute of Education in London, I
decided to take the opportunity to conduct exploratory research to answer my questions, in the
hopes that it will fuel further research. My presentation will begin by introducing the research
and why it is an important topic, followed briefly by my methodology. I will then outline my
preliminary results, make recommendations for future research, and conclude with some
further questions.
The aim of my research is to explore Mongolian students’ educational and occupational
aspirations. I have three research questions:
 What are Mongolian students’ educational and occupational aspirations?
 What influences Mongolian students’ aspirations?
 What are the perceived barriers to achieving Mongolian students’ aspirations?
This research is necessary for several different reasons. First, career aspirations have a
strong relationship to career development, decision-making, and attainment (Rojewski, 2004;
Sewell, Haller and Ohlendorf, 1970; Creed, Wong and Hood, 2009). It is therefore beneficial to
study youths’ aspirations in order to gain important insight into Mongolian youth and the
economy. Second, Mongolia has a relatively young population, with the median age at about
27 years in 2014 (CIA.gov, 2016). According to a report by the International Labour
Organization (ILO, 2013), some of the challenges to youth employment in Mongolia include a
rural/urban education gap that has resulted in a job quality gap, gender imbalances in
education and labor force participation, a large portion of working youth in non-wage, informal
work, and an 11% unemployment rate of economically active young people. In order to
address these challenges, it is necessary to gain a better picture of the obstacles youth face in

2. achieving their goals. Further, most reports cite a skills gap as the main obstacle for accessing
formal employment (ILO, 2013; Shatz et. al., 2015; Bat-Erdene, 2011), and some also argue that
even though more Mongolian youth are completing higher education, there is a shortage in the
supply of jobs that require a college education (Bastedo, Batkhuyag, Prates, and Prytula, 2009).
This research can help define what skills need to be taught in school, as well as students’
knowledge of their economic opportunities. Finally, with different data reporting 30-40% of the
population in rural areas, there is need to explore the difference in economic opportunities for
rural youth versus urban youth.
II. Methodology
The research was conducted on 12th grade students in three different state high schools
in three different locales: a school in Ulaanbaatar, a school in Bayankhongor aimag center, and
a soum school in Bayankhongor aimag. In each school, four individual interviews and two focus
group interviews of six to ten students were carried out. The individual interviews in each
school consisted of two girls and two boys, and the focus groups were a mix of both sexes. The
participants were a diverse set of students with different academic and familial backgrounds,
skills, and aspirations. School training managers were also given an open-ended questionnaire
with nine questions.
The questions were created using several frameworks regarding children’s aspirations
that have been largely developed within the US. The individual interviews focused on three
sets of questions. The first set of questions asked about the student’s background and the
student’s sense of self. The second set of questions focused on the student’s aspirations and
the factors that influenced those aspirations. The final set of questions explored the different
barriers and support to achieving the student’s aspirations. The focus group interviews
concentrated more on barriers and support, and the questionnaire asked about the skills
needed and resources provided from the school’s perspective.
III. Preliminary Results

3. The students who were interviewed all had a wide range of occupational aspirations,
including doctor, engineer, professional wrestler, fashion designer, and military personnel.
Some had higher long-term aspirations, such as becoming a famous psychologist or the
President of Mongolia. All of the students planned on going to university, although one student
also wanted to simultaneously study at a vocational school to be a beautician. Every student
cited their own interests as the main influence to their aspirations. Generally, they talked
about how the subjects they were good at or the skills that they had were suitable for the job.
Most also said their family had some sort of influence, whether it was giving advice, approving
or disapproving of the student’s job choice, or the student wanting to support his or her family.
Other common influences for their job choice was the perceived “usefulness” of the job for
Mongolia’s development, job opportunities, and teachers.
The biggest differences in the results were in two areas: barriers to achieving their
aspirations, and desired resources. In terms of barriers to achieving their aspirations, none of
the students said they had any barriers when asked directly. Everyone thought that the only
thing keeping them from achieving their goals was themselves. However, soum and aimag
school students were much more worried about tuition than UB school students. The soum
school students also expressed concerned over being able to compete well with aimag and UB
school students, having lower knowledge and skills as a result of living in a small soum far away
from resources, and not having resources such as science labs or the internet. UB school
students talked about needing better science and school equipment and more after-school
clubs, indicating that they already had these resources in school to begin with. While UB
students felt that competing to be the “best” in their field would be challenging, they did not
express any concern over being able to compete with their peers in general.
Another point of significance in the results is the resources students said they needed in
their schools and communities. All of the students in the individual interviews from the UB
school talked about visiting the university they wanted to go to and speaking with university
teachers about their desired profession. The aimag school students also expressed that they
had the option to visit the university and college in their area, although only a few had actually
done so. The UB school students also talked about being in extracurricular activities and clubs

4. outside of school, where they said they gained more useful knowledge about some subjects
than the information they gained from their school. None of these opportunities were
available for the soum students, who did not even have regular access to internet. In fact, the
soum students expressed a need for more information about general career options via a
career panel, and their desired profession.
The research presented here is by no means comprehensive enough to make
overarching recommendations for Mongolia’s education system, however it can serve as a
preliminary investigation for further research. It is clear that while students have a wide variety
of career aspirations, there is a big difference in the students’ knowledge and the resources
that are available to help them achieve their goals. Not only does this negatively affect
students’ individual opportunities to achieve success in their work, but it is also potentially
problematic for Mongolia’s future development. With 30-40% of Mongolia’s population
outside of UB, that is a large portion of youth who are unable to develop the skills necessary to
achieve their goals and contribute to the development of Mongolia.
IV. Recommendations for future research
I currently have two recommendations to improve this study:
 Increase the sample size. Not only should more schools be studied, but a more
diverse sampling is needed to be more inclusive. Because this study only
concentrated on 12th grade students, it excludes students who left school after
the mandatory level of schooling (9th grade), which would include students who
want to work in the informal economy, such as in herding, or go to vocational
school. In addition, there is a wide variety of schools within UB itself, such as
private schools, foreign schools, and schools that serve the ger districts, which
can result in disparities among students in the city.
 Conduct a longitudinal study. When asked directly, most students said that
there are no challenges to achieving their aspirations, and that their schooling
has been adequate to succeed in their future schooling and endeavors.
However, as indicated by the general lack of knowledge about their desired

5. professions and higher education, it seems that it would be beneficial to the
research to revisit these students and ask them the same question at other
transitions in their life, such as after their first year of university, after they have
graduated from university, and one to two years after they’ve graduated from
university. The results would be able to tell us whether or not the disparities in
resources had a significant impact on the ability to compete.
V. Conclusion
Through individual and focus group interviews, students were asked about their
impending transition from high school and the potential challenges they may face to achieving
their career aspirations. The research has uncovered disparities between soum students,
aimag students, and UB students, especially in terms of their knowledge about future options
and the resources available to help them achieve their goals. Although unable to definitively
answer the research questions posed at the beginning of this paper, the data shows that the
questions are necessary to address issues facing Mongolian youth, and that should the
urban/rural disparities be significant, there are negative implications for Mongolia’s future
development. The results also create more questions: How can Mongolia close the education
gap among its schools? How can Mongolia’s universities better inform secondary schools about
what their university can offer? How can secondary schools work better to make sure their
students are prepared for their transitions?

6. References
 Bastedo, M., Batkhuyag, B., Prates, E. and Prytula, Y. (2009). Issue Brief: Educational
Policies for Integrating College Competencies and Workforce Needs: Cases from Brazil,
Mongolia, Ukraine, and the United States. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Higher
Education Policy.
 Bat-Erdene, R. (2011). Mongolia. In: S. Majumdar, ed., Emerging Challenges and Trends
in TVET in the Asia-Pacific Region, 1st ed. Sense Publishers, pp.141-156.
 Cia.gov. (2016). The World Factbook. [online] Available at:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mg.html [Accessed
2 May 2016].
 ILO, (2013). Youth Employment Challenges in Mongolia: An overview. Ulaanbaatar.
 Shatz, H., Constant, L., Perez-Arce, F., Robinson, E., Beckman, R., Huang, H., Glick, P. and
Ghosh-Dastidar, B. (2015). Improving the Mongolian Labor Market and Enhancing
Opportunities for Youth. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation.