Status of Education in Mongolia Mongolia boasts literacy rates
of 97.7 percent for both men and women. Despite the high
literacy achieved under the formerly centrally planned system,
significant poverty and increasing rural-urban disparities
strain the education system. With a population of 2.9 million
spread across vast terrain and few domestic publishers,
Mongolia's main educational challenge is reaching remote
communities. There is tremendous pressure to learn English,
given the government's declaration in 2005 to make English the
country's second language, but universities and other
institutions are normally unable to afford ample books,
newspapers, or resource materials in Mongolian, let alone
English. As the majority of educational institutions in far-
flung communities don't have access to English-language
material, Books for Asia donates new books donated by American
publishers to all provinces: more than 70,000 books to nearly
400 institutions on an annual basis, including schools,
universities, nongo