{"id":{"repo_id":"buffalo","oai_identifier":"oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/86647"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/buffalo/oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/86647","repository":{"repo_id":"buffalo","name":"Buffalo","base_url":"https://ubir.buffalo.edu/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Transitioning Through Higher Education: Mongolian Stakeholder Experiences of Post-Soviet Neoliberal Policymaking","abstract":"Ph.D.","abstract_html":"Ph.D.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Dominguez, Rachel"],"institution":"State University of New York at Buffalo","degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Weis, Lois","Educational Leadership and Policy"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2025,"date_issued":"2025-02-21T21:36:00Z","date_published":"2025-02-21T21:36:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:05:34Z","subjects":["sociology","educational sociology","education"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/10477/86647","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Weis, Lois","Educational Leadership and Policy"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Dominguez, Rachel"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2025-02-21T21:36:00Z","2020"]},{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["State University of New York at Buffalo"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Text","Dissertation"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["sociology","educational sociology","education"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/10477/86647"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Ph.D.","In this dissertation, I examine the phenomenon of neoliberalism, which has dominated higher educational decision-making and the reorganization of systems in countries in post-Soviet transition over the past 30 years, from the vantage point of one uniquely positioned nation, Mongolia. It is illustrative to examine Mongolian higher education in transition, not only to learn more about what has happened in the small, landlocked nation located between political giants China and Russia, but also because the Mongolian case is one that heavily relies on educational transfer and has fully adopted free market, neoliberal ideology in the remaking of its higher education system. I traveled to the National University of Mongolia to conduct a qualitative inquiry into the changes that have occurred within the country’s tertiary education system, examining how Mongolia made the 1992 transition from a one-party polity to a capitalist democracy, and the changes to the role of the state in higher education change. I interviewed Mongolian higher education stakeholders, including students, faculty, and graduates, to discover how they characterize changes to their institutions and to the higher education public sector since the transition, specifically examining how men and women, and rural and urban students, understand the nature of the political and economic transition and the changing role of the state in higher education. The methodological framework of critical bifocality (Weis and Fine, 2012) allows for a more robust understanding of what has happened in Mongolian higher education in transition. In turn, this project has also provided a template for how to broaden the important work of Weis and Fine (2012), who are committed to using bifocals to pay, \"theoretical and empirical attention to structures and lives [which] can be adjusted to varied contexts, historic moments, and accompanying institutional arrangements\" (p. 174). This dissertation contributes by broadening the framework beyond adjusting to particular historic moments. The historic moments and places are actually employed to interpret and analyze lives and structures, which contributes to and extends the theoretical scope of critical bifocality. This examination of and through Mongolian higher education experiences opens up new possibilities for creating \"circuits of solidarity\" (Weis and Fine, 2012, p. 195), where those who are dispossessed and marginalized are able to carve out opportunities and create more equitable outcomes. I find that Mongolian higher education stakeholders were largely open to the new system, and were not widely critical of the advent of tuition fees in higher education. They discussed the benefits of the transition in terms of increased global connectivity and closely analyzed the changes to the nature of knowledge itself. Analysis of interviews with women and men students, and urban and rural students, indicated that the de- and re-traditionalization of gender is prevalent in Mongolian higher education in transition, and that rural student disparity in Mongolian higher education is both financial and social in nature. I have utilized historical context as a means of interpreting, locating, and enhancing data for analysis. When historical analysis is connected with analyses of other variables, such as gender and urbanicity (or, as I have suggested for future research on Mongolia, socio-economic status), critical bifocality is enhanced as a means of understanding how structures produce lives at the same time that lives produce, reproduce, and contest social and economic structures.","**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact library@buffalo.edu. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.**"]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Transitioning Through Higher Education: Mongolian Stakeholder Experiences of Post-Soviet Neoliberal Policymaking"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Weis, Lois","Educational Leadership and Policy"],"dc:creator":["Dominguez, Rachel"],"dc:date":["2025-02-21T21:36:00Z","2020"],"dc:description":["Ph.D.","In this dissertation, I examine the phenomenon of neoliberalism, which has dominated higher educational decision-making and the reorganization of systems in countries in post-Soviet transition over the past 30 years, from the vantage point of one uniquely positioned nation, Mongolia. It is illustrative to examine Mongolian higher education in transition, not only to learn more about what has happened in the small, landlocked nation located between political giants China and Russia, but also because the Mongolian case is one that heavily relies on educational transfer and has fully adopted free market, neoliberal ideology in the remaking of its higher education system. I traveled to the National University of Mongolia to conduct a qualitative inquiry into the changes that have occurred within the country’s tertiary education system, examining how Mongolia made the 1992 transition from a one-party polity to a capitalist democracy, and the changes to the role of the state in higher education change. I interviewed Mongolian higher education stakeholders, including students, faculty, and graduates, to discover how they characterize changes to their institutions and to the higher education public sector since the transition, specifically examining how men and women, and rural and urban students, understand the nature of the political and economic transition and the changing role of the state in higher education. The methodological framework of critical bifocality (Weis and Fine, 2012) allows for a more robust understanding of what has happened in Mongolian higher education in transition. In turn, this project has also provided a template for how to broaden the important work of Weis and Fine (2012), who are committed to using bifocals to pay, \"theoretical and empirical attention to structures and lives [which] can be adjusted to varied contexts, historic moments, and accompanying institutional arrangements\" (p. 174). This dissertation contributes by broadening the framework beyond adjusting to particular historic moments. The historic moments and places are actually employed to interpret and analyze lives and structures, which contributes to and extends the theoretical scope of critical bifocality. This examination of and through Mongolian higher education experiences opens up new possibilities for creating \"circuits of solidarity\" (Weis and Fine, 2012, p. 195), where those who are dispossessed and marginalized are able to carve out opportunities and create more equitable outcomes. I find that Mongolian higher education stakeholders were largely open to the new system, and were not widely critical of the advent of tuition fees in higher education. They discussed the benefits of the transition in terms of increased global connectivity and closely analyzed the changes to the nature of knowledge itself. Analysis of interviews with women and men students, and urban and rural students, indicated that the de- and re-traditionalization of gender is prevalent in Mongolian higher education in transition, and that rural student disparity in Mongolian higher education is both financial and social in nature. I have utilized historical context as a means of interpreting, locating, and enhancing data for analysis. When historical analysis is connected with analyses of other variables, such as gender and urbanicity (or, as I have suggested for future research on Mongolia, socio-economic status), critical bifocality is enhanced as a means of understanding how structures produce lives at the same time that lives produce, reproduce, and contest social and economic structures.","**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact library@buffalo.edu. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.**"],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/10477/86647"],"dc:language":["eng"],"dc:publisher":["State University of New York at Buffalo"],"dc:rights":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."],"dc:subject":["sociology","educational sociology","education"],"dc:title":["Transitioning Through Higher Education: Mongolian Stakeholder Experiences of Post-Soviet Neoliberal Policymaking"],"dc:type":["Text","Dissertation"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:05:34Z"}