A
ministry ban on vocational courses at higher education institutions has left
local universities facing a waste of facilities and lecturers they had been
using only for these courses.
The Ho Chi Minh City University of Food
Industry complains that it has no clue how to deal with the specialized tools
and personnel of the school’s vocational training curricula after the Ministry
of Education and Training prohibited universities from running occupational
courses alongside traditional undergraduate and graduate programs from the next
school year onwards.
A school official says it has many teachers
who specialize in teaching vocational courses, so finding work for them after
the ban will be a challenge.
They can, technically speaking, teach at the
junior college levels, but it is going to take them a long time to get used to
the new teaching methods, the official says.
He adds that the labs and other tools the
school bought to teach its cooking programs will likely be left unused in the
future.
Nguyen Xuan Hoan, vice president of the Ho Chi
Minh City University of Industry, says the school has suffered from the same
problem.
“We are struggling to find other jobs for over
400 vocational teachers, since it is impossible for us to lay them off,” Hoa
elaborates.
The same number of vocational teachers at
Nguyen Tat Thanh University, based in the city, may be jobless as well, school
president Nguyen Manh Hung says.
Ly Thi Phuong Hoa, of the Ho Chi Minh City
Medicine and Pharmacy University, says the prohibition has also made redundant
many teachers of its vocational branch.
Many universities are thus considering
establishing separate vocational schools to continue offering the forbidden
courses, and make use of their available facilities and teachers.
The Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry’s
vice president, for instance, said the school would set up an independent
vocational subsidiary to prevent a waste of facilities and personnel.
The HCMC-based Ton Duc Thang University will
also establish a vocational branch in the central city of Nha Trang, according
to a school management official.
An Giang University, which is located in the
Mekong Delta, is going to found its own comprehensive occupational branch, vice
president Hoang Xuan Quang said.
But all of this is just a Band-Aid solution,
university officials admitted, adding that they will gradually stop offering
vocational courses in the future.
The education supervisory body recently
announced the ban following complaints by vocational schools that they were
unable to compete with universities, which were also offering professional
courses.
Dr Ly Van Xuan, head of academic affairs at
the Ho Chi Minh City Medicine and Pharmacy University, warned of a lack of
human resources for the health sector after his school had been banned from
running vocational courses, many of which could be found at very few other
schools.
In the same fashion, Dr Nguyen Dinh Tuan, president
of the Ho Chi Minh City University of Natural Resources and Environment, said
the country would probably face a shortage of manpower for certain sectors
following its shutdown of vocational courses.
TUOI TRE
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