Mongolia's educational system is supplemented by and crowned by study in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe. In 1983 more than 10,000 Mongolians were studying in the Soviet Union as postgraduates at 10 academies, 191 institutions of higher learning, 101 specialized secondary schools, and 28 vocational schools. Each year 1,500 Mongolians were sent to Soviet vocational schools. Specialists of all sorts, from civil aviation pilots to urban planners to physicists, were trained in the Soviet Union. Party members at the mid-level and higher attended higher party schools in the Soviet Union. As it had since the early twentieth century, Russian served as the language of modernity and enlightenment, Mongolia's window on the wider world. So important was command of Russian that, in 1982, the People's Great Hural called for the study of Russian to begin in kindergarten.

Data as of June 1989