Vietnam has too many universities

Vietnam should define how many universities and junior colleges they should have, after considering the labor force demand in the society. It should not strive to have as many universities as possible, just to catch up with other regional countries.

How many universities does Vietnam have? Educators would give inaccurate answers, maybe 450 or 470. However, the figures change regularly, because one or two new universities are established every month, and 17-20 new universities are opened every year. In fact, the figure of 17-20 new schools is not reliable as well.

More and more universities have been established in the last 10 years, which has recalled people of the agricultural cooperative establishment movement many years ago. 

Dr Nguyen Minh Hoa, an educator, wrote on Saigon Tiep Thi that Vietnam is witnessing a tragic situation which cannot be seen anywhere else in the world: the universities in the country do not compete by offering high quality services, but by the tricks. A lot of schools now offer gifts in cash, in uniforms and lower the required minimum marks, accepting low quality students.

In the past, universities were established in big cities, but now universities are located in every province, except Dak Nong, the newly established province. Especially, there are four or five universities in the same locality. There are also numerous universities which have been upgraded from junior colleges, vocational schools, political schools and continuation schools. 

The number of newly set up universities is so big that even the educators, who have the service length of 30-40 years, would say they never hear about them.

Providing education services proves to be a lucrative business, which explains why not only ministries and organization, but economic groups and corporations have also jumped into the field. If construction or real estate groups, media or information technology corporations still do not have universities, they still cannot show their “upper class”.

Local newspapers have quoted their sources as saying that 75 percent of the operational universities in Vietnam have been set up in the last 10 years.

While a lot of new universities have been established in the last 10 years, the number of lecturers and the material facilities conditions have not increased accordingly. As a result, non-state universities scramble for students by offering gifts and preferences. In order to have more students, schools have to accept low quality students. Since schools do not have permanent lecturers, they mostly have to use visiting lecturers who officially work for state owned schools.

Why does Vietnam decide to set up so many universities?

The Ministry of Education and Training has decided that Vietnam needs to increase the number of university and junior college students in every 10,000 people to the level equal to that of other regional countries. Only by doing so, will Vietnam be able to become an industrialized country by 2020 as expected.

A program on training more PhDs has also been kicked off, under which PhDs would appear in all state agencies and education establishments, and Vietnam needs to have 20,000 PhDs by 2020.

The ministry has cited the figures as saying that Vietnam now only has 200-220 students per 10,000 people, while the proportions are much higher, 400-450, in other regional countries, such as Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Especially, in South Korea and Singapore, there are 500-600 university students in every 10,000 people.

The Ministry of Education and Training vows to increase the ratio of students per 10,000 people to 400 by 2025.

Commenting about the goal, Dr Hoa said that the national economy can be described a human body which can only accept the energy at a certain level. How many engineers, bachelors, architects and managers should be produced will depend on the actual demand in different periods. In other words, Vietnam should decide how many bachelors to produce based on the labor force demand, not on the figures of other regional countries.

Source: SGTT