Vietnam - VGU ready to be a modern university in VN

A total funding of $200 million will support Vietnamese-German University’s goal to bring in a new model of university education featuring the best education, the best research and the best administration in Vietnam, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mallon, the President of the university, told Tuoi Tre News in a recent interview.

With a total funding of $200 million, including a $180 million lending package from the World Bank (WB) and a corresponding fund worth $20 million from the Vietnamese government, how will the funding help Vietnamese German University (VGU) in its future growth strategies?

The funding will support us a lot because VGU belongs to a new model university system in Vietnam. We are the first university in that system. The second one was started two years ago in Hanoi.

Our goal is to bring in a new model of university education, and we want to be the best university featuring the best education, the best research and the best administration.

In realizing this goal, we need the best people, and we need to provide the best conditions – the best campus – to recruit them.

So the funding from the WB and the Vietnamese government will help us set up our facility in Binh Duong Province. We have held a competition worldwide to choose a unique and modern architectural design for the entire 50-hectare plan there.

At the same time, to fit with the new university, we need a professional administration, and the funding will help us offer training for our staff to raise their working capacities. The money will also be used for consultancy to establish the best structure for the university.

The funding will also help us to offer scholarships in line with our preferential fee admission policy for our Vietnamese students, also focusing on ethnic minorities and poor students, with consideration toward gender equality in accordance with WB regulations.

A major part of the funding will also be channeled into research, a thing we want to raise to a higher level.

When will the funding be disbursed? What are your corresponding growth strategies for each stage of disbursement?

The problem is pretty easy: we must plan how to spend all the money in the most effective way by 2017, when all the money will be disbursed after the final credit contract is signed one year earlier.

In between, we need pop-up plans to map out which funds will be spent for which modules of development.

For example, we have some money from WB for consultancy of IT growth strategies, and we have to plan all the things related to it, including which software and hardware will be needed and who will be in charge of implementing all those IT strategies, beforehand.

For each stage, we will have a clear plan, which will consider and rearrange which modules and which packages in consultancy, laboratories and exhibit construction should be realized, following the target to have all the money spent by the end of 2017.

How many majors has VGU planned to have by the time the Binh Duong facility comes online?

We have planned to have some 1,000, 5,000, and 12,000 students in 2014, 2020, and 2030 respectively in Binh Duong campus. The majors will be arranged in clusters. Each cluster, themed with a special topic, will have 5-6 study programs, so we will have a total of 75-80 study programs by then.

We have also set up a new master plan to start those study programs, as we are a university focusing on many targets and objectives.

In addition, as a public university of Vietnam, we have to serve the development of Vietnam, so we have to understand in which direction Vietnam wants to go and which programs will be popular.

It is not the whole story, and we can see some areas that are lacking. We recognize the need of programs to improve traffic and transport conditions in Vietnam. But the students don’t see the need, so we get very few enrollees in the field of traffic and transport.

Moreover, we also have to meet the demand of our students, who hope to have jobs with high salaries and high positions in the future.

As a result, the university must serve the needs of Vietnam and convince our students that a specific program is valuable for them and for the country.

Furthermore, our university also focuses on research, as the big selling point of German education is the combination of research and study programs. We teach our students in scientific ways and allow our master's students to participate in research so that they can conduct research themselves later on.

We teach our students critical thinking so that they are capable of approaching any problem in a scientific way and applying the most appropriate and effective methods to solve those problems in a sustainable way.

What is the result of the recent meeting of the university council in the central city of Da Nang?

The council consists of 20 members, 10 German and 10 Vietnamese high-ranking experts, including state officials from the ministries of foreign affairs and education and training of the two nations.

There were many topics brought into the meeting, including current study programs and new ones to be added, intake numbers, and the portrait of the Binh Duong campus, as well as continuous development plans for the university.

The meeting has bolstered the support of the two governments for the development of the university.

Does VGU train Vietnamese students to provide human resources for German companies in Vietnam?

As president of the German-Vietnamese University (VGU), I want all of our students to succeed in life.

They have highly-developed skills, so they will find positions that they are satisfied with. It can be with German companies, Vietnamese companies, or American companies. I’m sure that when they come from German-Vietnamese University, they are a little bit closer to German companies, but they have to choose positions that satisfy their education and general profession. They are not forced to go to German companies.

Whenever they find good positions, they should go, but of course, VGU has close contacts in the German community, so German companies look forward to receiving our students. 

As we know, Germany is not only well-known for technology and research, but it is also a country of eminent philosophers and classical composers. Does VGU have any plan to develop study programs associated with philosophy and music in the future?

When you want to boost or develop your economy, you need elite industries. That is why we talk about engineering. And sure, to expand the university, we cannot only focus on engineering. If you check our website, you can see that we also have other interesting study programs in economics, financial accounting, and information systems.

In the future, we want to have a more positive humanities side. What I can imagine about Vietnamese students who decide to study at Vietnamese-Germany University is that they have some interest in German culture. I can imagine that we will invite German philosophers or CEOs to VGU in the future, so that our students can learn about German culture.

We will also contact the German embassy in Hanoi, so that whenever important people from German ministries or German cultural officials travel to Vietnam or are interested in putting their investment here, we would like to invite them to attend events at the university to provide our students with more opportunities to make contact with German culture.

Why did you decide to take the position of the president of VGU?

First, I’ve already worked for more than 12 years in Asia. It's like a kind of new world. I’m now 46 years old. My professional life has a lot of experience. I want to create something sustainable.

I also try to support students as human beings. It’s not just about making money. I imagine that when I’m 70 years old and I come back to the university, I will see students studying here. I would like to see that they will be satisfied with their positions and they will be interested in their jobs.

From the beginning, I would like to renovate the university’s structure, to develop a new campus, and to bring my ideas to the university and the campus. It is a very nice job. And therefore, I have been impressed. When I first heard of the opportunity to become the university’s president, I was really impressed.

I also like Vietnamese food and enjoy life here with my family in Thao Dien residential area in District 2.

What do you think about Vietnamese students?

I appreciate their skills. The interesting part is that Vietnam is a very young country, and I think more than 70 percent of your country’s population is under 40 years old. Vietnamese young people have to change and develop themselves, to take their lives in their own hands, and to educate and train themselves to become better and better.

In fact, they try very hard because of high competition nowadays. They are under great pressure to study hard. They have to have the best results to find the best university to get the best degrees. And this is a kind of motivation. I appreciate Vietnamese students very much.

I used to live and work in China for five and a half years and the situation was the same. Then I went back to Germany. In Germany, the population is much older. If you look around on the street, you only see old people. If you go to shops, you just listen to old music.

If you go shopping in Ho Chi Minh City, you will hear noisy pop music because the population is very young. Because Germany does not have such a young population, competition is not as serious as in Vietnam.

I think in Asia in general, and Vietnam in particular, education is valued very highly and everybody tries to get as much as knowledge as possible.

QUYNH TRUNG-THOAI TRAN

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