Vietnam - Universities offer cash awards to lure students

Anticipating that there would not be many students to enroll, non-state universities have been trying to lure students by offering scholarships and awards.


Nguyen Thanh My, Chair of the Thai Binh Duong University, has released a decision on offering tuition remission and awards in the 2011 enrolment season, in an effort to attract more students.

The school has decided to reduce the tuition by 20-25 percent, give the award of 700,000 dong in cash to the students who got 16-19 marks from the university entrance exams, and give one million dong to the students who got 20 marks and more. 

Besides, the school has also decided to pay money to the high schools, continuation schools and education departments which encourage their students to study further at the Thai Binh Duong University. For every student the schools introduce to Thai Binh Duong, they can get 250,000 dong.

Thai Binh Duong School has been advertised as providing training services in 20 majors. The school also reportedly has belonging units, including the training and international cooperation institute, the training center for export laborers, job trading floor and experimental grammar school.

However, in fact, the school is only training five training branches for university (4 year training) and junior college (3 year training) level, including finance & banking, accountancy, tourism business administration, information technology and English. Meanwhile, the above said units that support the training just remain on paper.

Since the school began its operation in 2009, it has the “quota” of enrolling 500 students a year. However, Thai Binh Duong has never enrolled enough students.

In 2011, Thai Binh Duong plans to enroll 500 students for the university training. The students, who pass the entrance exams to the school, will get the money from the school that supports their accommodation and travel. However, only 92 students registered to take the exams to the school, and only three of them passed the exams.

Vo Van Tuan Dung, President of Thai Binh Duong School, said on Dan Viet that it is too difficult to enroll students this year, therefore, the school has decided to offer awards to students, affirming that the awarding does not violate any laws, because Thai Binh Duong is a private run school which does not use money from the state budget.

Meanwhile, the behavior of Thai Binh Duong has been facing violent criticism from other schools in Khanh Hoa province, which have condemned Thai Binh Duong of making unhealthy competition.

Some experts have also pointed out that offering money to lure students should be seen as a kind of “anti-educational” method, which will make students have wrong understanding about the meaning of education.

Meanwhile, Tien phong has also reported that many schools, which fear they cannot enroll enough students, have “broken the regulations” to attract more learners.

The Ha Nam-based Ha Hoa Tien University just can enroll a few students who passed the entrance exams to the school. Therefore, it now expects more students from the ones, who failed the exams to other schools and want to register to study at another school. (Under the current regulations, the examinees, who fail the exams to the registered schools, can register to study at other schools, which set lower required marks, as their second or third choices).

The university has announced that the students who register to study at the school and have 22 marks and more from the latest university entrance exams, would be awarded a scholarship worth 2.5 million dong, which is equal to the tuition for the first semester.

The Hai Phong people founded school has also announced that poor students would be able to borrow 8.5 million dong a year at the preferential interest rates, and enjoy the tuition reductions of 10-50 percent per annum.

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