Poor quality of university graduates blamed on low training costs

Educators, admitting that university training quality is declining while the number of unemployed graduates is on the rise, blamed low training costs, estimated at $500 a year.

Prof Dang Kim Vui, director of Thai Nguyen University, commented that the university training quality has declned because the number of students enrolled i high compared with schools’ training capacity.

“There are classes with 70-80 students, while there were only 20 students in each class in the past,” Vui said.

Since classes are overloaded, students can only receive theoretical knowledge, and don’t have time for practice hours.

At Thai Nguyen University, the medical school is a ‘hot’ school with 50-60 students in each class. When students go to hospitals on internships, the hospitals say they don’t know what to tell them to do.

Vo Van Sen, rector of the HCMC University of Social Sciences and Humanities, doesn’t think the university education quality is worsening. He said the training quality has improved, but slowly.

However, he also thinks there are too many universities with many schools not meeting standards which cannot produce high-quality graduates.

Sen urged the Ministry of Education and Training to settle the problem by eliminating substandard schools.

“How can a school be a university with just 5-10 PhDs,” Sen said.

MOET’s Minister Phung Xuan Nha confirmed that only 17 percent of university lecturers have a doctorate.

Hoang Minh Son, rector of the Hanoi University of Technology, one of the most prestigious schools in Vietnam, said that quality cannot be high because of low training costs.

He said that with the current training cost and the quality of school graduates, the training is very effective.

According to Son, the training cost in Vietnam is equal to 1/17 of Malaysia’s, 1/15 of Singapore’s and 1/20 of Hong Kong’s. With such low expenses, schools cannot compete in global integration.

Nha agrees, saying that the training cost in Vietnam is VND13 million a year, or $500. Meanwhile, the figures are $16,000 in the US for state owned schools and $36,000 for private schools.

As schools have to gather strength to increase income to cover expenses, they don’t have time to upgrade training quality.

Figures that show that 200,000 university graduates are jobless have become a hot topic of discussions about university education.

Do Van Dung, rector of the HCMC Technical University, said that 200,000 is not as high and ‘alarming’ as described. It is much lower than regional countries and developed countries.

Dung showed his doubt about the figure, saying that the concept ‘unemployed’ remains unclear. However, he admitted that in many cases, graduates because they cannot satisfy the market requirements.

Nghi Ba / vietnamnet