The ambitious plans set up by the government and the Ministry of Education and Training have made universities worried stiff.
29,000 more PhDs after eight years
A report by the National Assembly’s Standing Committee released in September 2011 showed that Vietnam now has 440 schools which provide university training, including 304 schools which have been newly established or upgraded from junior colleges since 1998.
MOET has set up a goal that by 2015, 70 percent of university lecturers would have master degree, while 30 percent would be PhDs. Answering the inquiries of National Assembly’s Deputies, Minister of Education and Training Pham Vu Luan said at present, 14 percent of university lecturers have doctorates, while 35 percent have master degree.
Up to 50 percent of university lecturers have just graduated from universities, which according to Chair of the Social Issues Committee Truong Thi Mai, is a big problem. “How can we upgrade the university training if the majority of lecturers only have university degree?” Mai questioned.
In June 2010, the government approved the project on training PhDs for university lecturers for the period of 2010-2020, under which about 10,000 PhDs would be trained at prestigious universities in the world, and 10,000 PhDs would be trained domestically. It is expected that by 2020, Vietnam would have at least 20,000 PhDs more which will help upgrade the university training quality.
Especially, MOET has decided that when opening a new training major, a school must have at least one PhD and 3 masters for the major or it will be forced to stop enrolment. In late 2011, MOET decided to force 4 schools to stop enrolment for 12 majors since the schools could not satisfy the requirements.
Besides the 20,000 PhD project, MOET has released a program on human resource development in 2011-2020. It is expected that by the 2019-2020 academic year, junior colleges would need 27,000 lecturers who have master degree (60 percent), and 3500 PhDs (8 percent). The figures are 58,000 MAs (70 percent) and 29,000 PhDs (30 percent).
30 percent of PhDs really a challenge
Nguyen Viet Thinh, President of the Hanoi University of Education, said that 30 percent of lecturers having doctorates is really a big challenge, which his school will have to sweat blood to obtain.
Dr Nguyen Quang Dong, Head of the Training Division of the Hanoi Economics University, said that there are few lecturers who can meet the requirements to go abroad to attend training courses for PhD degrees, while very few want to attend domestic training courses.
This explains why Vietnamese universities cannot enroll enough candidates for master and PhD training. The HCM City University had the quota to train 10 PhDs a year in 2008-2010. However, it could only find 5-6 candidates a year. The school only got enough candidates in 2011, because it did not organize entrance exams, but found candidates based on their learning records.
The member schools of the HCM City National University are facing the same situation. In 2008, the University of Technology needed to find 20 people for the PhD training course, but only 16 attended the entrance exams, and 7 passed the exams. In 2010, it could find 22 out of 30 needed
Dong said that people do not want to follow domestic training courses because there is not scholarship for the learning. Meanwhile, the budget allocated by the State is too modest, just 1.05 million dong per month.
Kieu Oanh
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