Many VN's universities cannot meet training quality: Minister

Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha said at a conference on upgrading university education that school training quality was one of the reasons behind the high unemployment rate of bachelor’s degree graduates.



There are three factors that affect training quality. First, the teaching staff.

“With limited teaching staff in both quantity and quality and the high ratio of students to lecturers, the training quality must not be good,” he said.

A report showed that only 17-19 percent of lecturers have doctorate, while the others are masters or bachelor’s degree graduates.

Second, the facilities. “University is not only the place which contains knowledge. It is also the place for creation. How can we create in the schools which look like storehouses?” he said, adding that students mostly receive theoretical knowledge because of the lack of facilities for practice hours.

And third, financial capability. Only a few schools can save money for re-investment, while the majority of schools rely on tuition and other sources of income.

Also according to Nha, schools are very weak at forecasting. They mostly provide training based on their experiences. As a result, there are unemployed university graduates in some sectors, while other sectors need many workers.

“What is the responsibility for school rectors in bad forecasting? If the situation cannot improve, we will lose in our home market. We will have to import workers from the Philippines and Malaysia and export untrained workers,” he said.

“It is the rectors of the schools who must take responsibility for the training quality,” he said.

Vo Van Sen, rector of the HCMC University of Social Sciences and Humanities, said the investment in lecturing staff was inappropriate.

“I feel sad that only 17-20 percent of university lecturers are PhDs,” he said, pointing out that Vietnam was aware of the problem a long time ago, but it still cannot fix the problem because of the lack of investment.

Sen said in order to upgrade the quality of human resources, it is necessary to reprogram schools.

“MOET needs to take drastic measures to restructure schools – upgrade schools and eliminate substandard schools,” he said, adding that in the past, many schools were upgraded into universities even though they could not satisfy requirements.

An analyst commented that eliminating substandard schools is not difficult work.

In fact, many schools continue to operate even while not enrolling enough students, and therefore, don’t have sources of revenue and cannot carry out research activities.

To date, 20 schools in Vietnam have been accredited.

Le Ha / vietnamnet