Vietnam's long road to learning
HANOI - Nguyen An Thi, not yet three years old, has already been
attending the privately run Rainbow School in Hanoi for a year. Sure, he's
a privileged child, but there are thousands more young children in the
country whose parents' sacrifice provides them with a jump-start in
learning.
Of the more than 82 million people in Vietnam, half are under the age of
30. They are the first generation to come of age in peace, and their dreams
are indeed challenging previous Communist Party slogans, though the
nimble new communists are in many cases quite effective capitalists
themselves.
Together, Vietnam's new young consumers are charting the course for a
brighter future, more than any of their ancestors might have imagined, and
the key to their future is education.
"Presently we have over 22 million people now enrolled in the formal
education system and we have over 751,000 educators of all different
levels," acknowledged Dr Dang Ba Lam, director general of the National
Institute for Educational Development in Hanoi.
The recently signed United States-Vietnam trade agreement may generate
educational opportunities for foreign investors. The facts are startling: The
demand for quality education is huge and growing - the number of students
who entered university last year represented a near-sixfold increase on
1990 enrollments.
Nowadays, more than 900,000 Vietnamese are enrolled in colleges and
universities. Students sitting tertiary entrance exams this year number 1.2
million, and this figure is expected to climb by 5 percent annually up to
2010.
After all, this is a society where knowledge traditionally brings enormous
respect, where the ambition of most students leaving high school is to
complete an undergraduate degree and at least one postgraduate
qualification, and where part-time language or vocational courses are
almost a national obsession.
Education authorities reportedly plan to build a further 61 universities over
the next 10 years to meet increasing demand, bringing the total number of
tertiary institutions to 284.
Credit must be given to the government. Since 1986 when doi moi or
renovation started, Vietnam's literacy rates have dramatically improved
and school enrollments are up - a sure sign that the government's present
and future commitments to education might pay off. Nevertheless, the
capacity of the education system is inadequate to support the rapid
enrollment rates.
Confucian educational roots
Vietnam is a country strongly committed to education, dating back to its
Confucian roots and culminating in the country's network today of more
than 190 private and public universities and colleges. The World Bank
estimates that 94 percent of Vietnam's adult population is literate, a figure
that is especially impressive given its financial constraints and many years
of war.
In 1991, the government signed a law to universalize primary education,
and plans to universalize junior secondary education by 2010, with senior
secondary education following in 2020. These developments are indicative
of the high value that Vietnamese place on education.
Vietnam's education system is undergoing a period of tremendous
upheaval and change, as universities and colleges seek new ways to
become more responsive to the demands of this growing student population
with skill needs for the market-oriented economy.
As the state ministry charged with managing Vietnam's education system,
the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has launched a number of
dramatic and sweeping reforms within the context of its present system.
These include consolidating universities in an effort to pool limited
resources (1995); authorizing the formation of semi-public, private and
people-founded universities (1997); encouraging universities to adopt a
bottom-up approach to curriculum development (1997); and lifting
requirements for a mid-term exam between the second and third years of
college to encourage students to complete their studies (1998). And most
recently, in the 2000-01 academic year, MOET allowed colleges and
universities to decide on student entrance criteria.
Problems in educational ranks
Despite such developments, Vietnam's education sector is saddled with
many serious problems. Critics contend that bulging enrollment rosters are
a strain on universities already hard pressed to keep up with demand.
Schools at virtually every level are running at overcapacity. Low teachers'
salaries have forced many to switch to more lucrative careers, causing a
shortage of at least 103,000 teachers in 1998. Among the 25,000 teachers
working at universities and colleges nationwide, only about 20 percent have
advanced degrees, usually from the Soviet era. Many universities and
colleges suffer from old, outdated equipment, books and learning materials,
and teachers have little access to new curricula and training.
Efforts to produce graduates with the skills and qualifications needed to
survive in the new market-oriented workplace have had mixed results; and
weak overall education management combined with a lack of real
institutional autonomy results in general inefficiency.
At Hanoi's respected School for Foreign Languages, Professor Nguyen
Ngoc Hung says that thousands of Vietnamese are studying English as a
way to gain access to more opportunities. "Additionally, we have set up a
pilot e-learning program with the New School in New York, and the focus
includes required readings on the Vietnam War," added Hung, a war
veteran.
Foreign investment initiatives
The potential role of foreign investment was acknowledged last year when
a Ministry of Education decree asserted that "all kinds of investment in
education, including joint ventures and 100 percent foreign-invested
projects" will be allowed.
The policy was adopted one month before Australia's Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology (RMIT) was granted a license to invest more than
US$50 million in the construction and operation of Vietnam's first
foreign-owned university in Ho Chi Minh City. Their scheduled new
campus is now under construction in Saigon South, a major
Taiwan-financed real-estate project outside of Ho Chi Minh City.
Courses including English, information technology (IT), computer science
and software engineering are taught to an international standard and cost
students between a quarter and a third of their equivalent in Australia.
Recognizing Vietnam's own valued tradition of university education, and
after more than two years of detailed project planning in cooperation with
the Asian Development Bank and the Vietnamese government, RMIT
received all the necessary licenses toward the establishment of the first full
foreign ownership and international curricula.
"Our unique license issued directly from the Vietnamese government may
very well become the future standard in the country," Patricia Roessler,
the deputy general director at RMIT International Vietnam, said from its
small, attractive small campus in Central Ho Chi Minh City.
Additionally, Tuck's Business School at Dartmouth has been cooperating
with the Hanoi School of Business. This successful program includes an
exchange of faculty and students. Professor Joseph Massey, former US
trade representative to China, has been spearheading this program for
several years. "Our friends in Vietnam are eager to have this shared
experience with Tuck, and we in turn are mindful of the contributions we
can make to providing MBA executive-level programs to Vietnam," said
Massey.
Distance learning
Distance education is not strange to the Vietnamese people. Courses in
foreign languages and test preparation lessons for university entry are
offered through state-run television and multimedia tools. These are rather
standard services but not enough to meet the needs of the younger
Internet-literate population.
Some institutions are promoting "Education Without Boundaries", a
distance-education agenda that is an excellent education alternative and
suitable for many Vietnamese students. These targeted distance-learning
students do not have to be concerned about international travel,
accommodation and food expenses, as well as frequent visa denials.
Despite these initiatives, Vietnam's government recognizes that funding
remains a big obstacle to providing the necessary hardware (computers) to
school systems. Millions of dollars must be invested not only in equipping
the country's more than 1,200 senior secondary schools, but also in training
IT teachers.
By James Borton - Asia Times Onlines - February 26, 2002.
|