Vietnam - Students refuse to write theses because they can’t find amenities in them

VietNamNet Bridge - More and more students refuse to write theses to graduate universities, though only excellent students are selected to do that.

Attending graduation exams or defending theses has become a hot topic for discussion on students’ forums recently.

N, a fourth year student of the HCM City Economics and Finance University, said she and some other classmates have refused to write dissertations.

“Even if we get 10 marks for the dissertation, we would not be able to obtain the university degrees at good level. Meanwhile, we would have to spend much more time and efforts to write theses than preparing for the graduation exams,” N explained.

An, who finished the Van Lang University in 2011, said he could meet the requirements to be selected to the group of students to defend graduation theses. However, his friends advised him to attend the exams instead, so as to save time and money.

“I think I made a right decision then. It was not too stressful to attend the exams,” he said.

Tens of students of the HCM City Information Technology University joined a debate on whether to defend theses or attend the graduation exams. Some said that the students who defend theses for the graduation would be favored by the employers than the other students.

Meanwhile, other students believe that they would rather to attend the exams, because they would have the opportunity to continue learning, which would be useful for their future jobs.

Dr. Duong Anh Duc, President of the HCM City Information Technology University, has confirmed that many students of the school have refused to make theses.

Duc explained that writing theses is a way of accumulating learning credits. If students don’t write theses, they would have to continue learning to obtain 10 more credits. The training would provide practical knowledge that serves their future jobs.

Dr. Nguyen Van Ngai from the HCM City Agriculture and Forestry University also confirmed that students nowadays are not interested in writing theses anymore, because they cannot see big benefits of the works.

Meanwhile, many other students do not want to write theses just because they don’t find it interesting. 

Theses, in principle, could be seen as small scientific research works, which require the creativeness and hard work of the authors.

However, the students complained that under the current mechanism, they don’t have the opportunities to show their creativeness. In general, students can only write the theses in the themes suggested by the lecturers who guide them, while in most cases, their suggested theses would not be accepted by the lecturers.

A lecturer of a university admitted that he has to guide a lot of students to write theses at the same time; therefore, he is reluctant to deal with a new topic.

“It would be better to deal with the topic you are very keen at and you have many documents about it. If you have to deal with an unfamiliar issue, you would have to spend time to look for documents and search information,” he explained.

The Banking Faculty of the HCM City economics schools had 1,200 students graduating in 2003-2011, while there were 30 lecturers in the faculty. This meant that a lecturer had to guide 45 students to write theses a year.

Tien Phong

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