Mongolian Education and Unemployment: A Problem of Our Generation
In nearly every conference, meeting or forum concerning mining, the organizers and concerned parties and participants always seem to have a particular problem with human resources in Mongolia. Observing the recent international conferences on mining and energy – Coal Mongolia, Mongolian Economic Forum, Mining Mongolia and the Energy Conference – numerous delegates representing the mining industry have spoke on difficulties faced by respective industries. One issue remaining from conference to conference, from speaker to speaker: the lack of workers.
The apparent high rate of unemployment can be attributed to a number of factors.
The Mongolian Labor Exchange, commissioned by the Ministry of Social Welfare and Labor, conducted comprehensive research on Mongolian unemployment and released its results last April. It was revealed that the high unemployment rate was due to Mongolians not being qualified for the available jobs even though last month, there were 47,068 active jobs registered at the Mongolian Labor Exchange.
The reason for the lack of qualification according to the research on currently unemployed Mongolians is they are reported to have “low work ethics, unsatisfactory professional and language skills, the inability to take on prolonged work pressure and responsibilities, the rejection of work and salary, lack of teamwork and the inability to use high end technologies.” It also reported that that many workers are not inclined to stay in one position over a long period of time. Yet, one learns basic abilities like taking on pressure and prolonged work from schools.
Mongolians never learned this from our schools. As a person who was educated in a western country, I realize that the difference in middle school education can have vast long-term effects on both the person and society and it seems that the reason for the lack of workers is Mongolia’s education system.
In middle schools in Mongolia, students are heavily institutionalized, following a strict schedule and strict time: remnants of the old Soviet education system. The strict nature of these schools may be effective, but the fact that the middle school students do not practice the skills necessary for work is not learned, most important being charisma and teamwork. Today, Mongolian public schools do not have comprehensive lesson plans on developing practical skills and they are entirely up to the teachers whether to teach them or not. This was so since the Soviet times and although the new market system in 1990 brought about many changes such as the new Education Law, the general lesson plans and teaching methods remained the same, spawning at least two generations of people with no practical skills and the ones that are stably working are the ones that have their own skills and abilities that never depended on the education received from middle schools.
The above research is based on surveys on mining companies. Mongolia lacks specialized training centers.
Another reason that companies lack qualified employees is that the most skilled and able individuals tend to go to other countries for employment, because obviously, the salary in Mongolia cannot be matched to those of other countries.
Architect A. Jargalsaikhan from the Mongolian University of Science and Technology, who has worked as an advisor on many construction projects in Mongolia – both buildings and monuments – said that the construction companies tend to make contracts with Chinese organizations to have Chinese workers come and work at the construction sites as Mongolian workers are risky, have too many productivity issues and pose certain threats to the stable operation of construction.
Now we must understand that we are in a different political and economic system where personal ambition and charisma – all of which were somewhat scolded upon in the pre-1990 Mongolia – are very important for getting employed today.
The apparent high rate of unemployment can be attributed to a number of factors.
The Mongolian Labor Exchange, commissioned by the Ministry of Social Welfare and Labor, conducted comprehensive research on Mongolian unemployment and released its results last April. It was revealed that the high unemployment rate was due to Mongolians not being qualified for the available jobs even though last month, there were 47,068 active jobs registered at the Mongolian Labor Exchange.
The reason for the lack of qualification according to the research on currently unemployed Mongolians is they are reported to have “low work ethics, unsatisfactory professional and language skills, the inability to take on prolonged work pressure and responsibilities, the rejection of work and salary, lack of teamwork and the inability to use high end technologies.” It also reported that that many workers are not inclined to stay in one position over a long period of time. Yet, one learns basic abilities like taking on pressure and prolonged work from schools.
Mongolians never learned this from our schools. As a person who was educated in a western country, I realize that the difference in middle school education can have vast long-term effects on both the person and society and it seems that the reason for the lack of workers is Mongolia’s education system.
In middle schools in Mongolia, students are heavily institutionalized, following a strict schedule and strict time: remnants of the old Soviet education system. The strict nature of these schools may be effective, but the fact that the middle school students do not practice the skills necessary for work is not learned, most important being charisma and teamwork. Today, Mongolian public schools do not have comprehensive lesson plans on developing practical skills and they are entirely up to the teachers whether to teach them or not. This was so since the Soviet times and although the new market system in 1990 brought about many changes such as the new Education Law, the general lesson plans and teaching methods remained the same, spawning at least two generations of people with no practical skills and the ones that are stably working are the ones that have their own skills and abilities that never depended on the education received from middle schools.
The above research is based on surveys on mining companies. Mongolia lacks specialized training centers.
Another reason that companies lack qualified employees is that the most skilled and able individuals tend to go to other countries for employment, because obviously, the salary in Mongolia cannot be matched to those of other countries.
Architect A. Jargalsaikhan from the Mongolian University of Science and Technology, who has worked as an advisor on many construction projects in Mongolia – both buildings and monuments – said that the construction companies tend to make contracts with Chinese organizations to have Chinese workers come and work at the construction sites as Mongolian workers are risky, have too many productivity issues and pose certain threats to the stable operation of construction.
Now we must understand that we are in a different political and economic system where personal ambition and charisma – all of which were somewhat scolded upon in the pre-1990 Mongolia – are very important for getting employed today.
Comments
Post a Comment