Vietnam higher education fails because of half-copied models
Many experts are blaming the education sector in Vietnam for
half-copying the education models of other countries, which makes it
unstable and inadequate in turning out highly-qualified graduates for
the country.
Vietnamese students are said to be interior to their overseas peers in
terms of language skills, work and lifestyles, self confidence, and in
adopting methods to approach and deal with a particular situation.
This experience is repeated in almost all Southeast Asian countries
despite having a tradition of eagerness in learning and an admiration
for highly-educated individuals.
Vietnam began to build its own tertiary education system after the
liberation of the North. Up until the late 1980s it had copied the
exact model of the former Soviet Union, in which the Ministry of
Education and Training wholly managed the operation of each tertiary
institution. It decided on student intake quotas and staff
recruitment, compiled textbooks and wrote the syllabi, and provided
and inspected the spending of state budget for all universities and
colleges. This mechanism created inertia among higher education bases,
while decisions on the structure of the training level and the
monitoring of training quality were beyond the capacity of the small,
unqualified staff at the MoET. In the end, Vietnam could only train
their younger generation in poorly equipped campuses, using outdated
knowledge and methods that stifled creative thinking.
Moreover, teachers often paid too much attention to theoretical
knowledge while neglecting practical application. Research institutes
within universities and colleges were viewed as ivory towers that were
isolated from both training activities and the real demand of the
country's social and economic development. Graduates were scholastic
but unable to perform well in the workplace.
The ratio of graduates in different training fields is also
disproportionate to demand in society, with too many graduates in law,
business management, medicine, natural and social sciences, and
humanities, and too few in industrial and agricultural engineering.
The Russian-styled higher education system was also spoiled by the
"achievement craving mentality" of Vietnamese people, which leads to
teachers being accommodating in assessing students' results and pushes
poor students to be dishonest in their schooling. Almost no students
would be expelled during their studies for low marks and all would
receive a university degree to secure a good job in a state office or
state-run enterprise, no matter how poorly qualified they were.
The situation still lingers today, as higher education becomes easier
to access. Postgraduate training is even easier than undergraduate
training provided you have enough money to pay for the course and
other unofficial expenses for teachers.
Since the early 1990s, the education sector has been trying to find a
way out by applying the US education model. The Ministry of Education
and Training allowed the opening up of private higher education
institutions and set up two national and several regional universities
that have several colleges providing training in specific fields and
research institutes. But it has failed to create fair competition
among state-run and private bases nor worked out smooth management
between the ministry and the parent universities and between the
parent universities and their colleges, faculties and institutes. The
education level has become chaotic and the ministry's intervention in
the institutions' activities hinders them from upgrading and improving
training quality.
This year's entrance exams held by the ministry are an example of the
intervention, which delayed recruitment processes by at least a month.
The higher education level is still struggling with various pilot
reforms but has yet to adopt a stable model.
Evidence of the failure of the higher education system in Vietnam lies
in the high rate of unemployed new graduates, which reached nearly 90%
last year. Among those who found a job, only a third worked in the
field in which they were trained.
The Ho Chi Minh City government is now seeking more autonomy in higher
education. It wants to decide the intake quotas for each training
field at its universities and colleges based on surveys of local labor
demand.
Many educationalists are also calling on the government to open up the
education level to create a market-led training model, which they say
will turn out good "products" that suit the country's development and
integration process.
Financial Times Information - October 11, 2002.
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