Vietnam - Universities losing billions of VND for entrance exams

Many universities have incurred huge losses from holding entrance exams due to increasing prices leasing exam space along with higher wages for supervisors and examiners.

An official from the HCM City Admission Office, under the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) said, “This year there are a total of 604,281 students taking entrance exams held by 38 universities and 20 colleges.”

For the first exam session, there were 217,858 people who took exams in 189 testing locations. Saigon University had the largest number, with 24,000 taking the test.

The second exam session had 241,099 who took exams in 186 testing facilities. HCM City University of Agriculture and Forestry topped the list with 26,640 examinees.

The third exam session enlisted 172,324 examinees in 127 exam compounds.

Although the number of “virtual” examinees who register for several universities in a single exam session have decreased dramatically, the number of examinees has remained high enough to lead to financial problems.

Pham Thai Son, Head of the Education and Training Chamber, under University of Food Industry, said that the price to rent an exam room ranges from VND300,000-500,000 (USD14.3-23.9). They have 22,000 students registered to take exams, requiring about 500 rooms to be rented.

“We will lose about VND600 million (USD28,680) this session, and this doesn't include the fees we must pay for the people who mark the exams. At the end of this session we expect the losses to reach into the billions," he said.

The fee for taking exams remains at only VND67,000 (USD3.2) per student, and universities and colleges are reluctant to raise the fees for fear that they will lose promising students.

Some universities have expressed hope that MoET will step in with financial support to deal with this problem.

Dtnews, NLD

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