VietNamNet Bridge – Nguyen An Ninh, Head of the Examination and Education Quality Accreditation Department under the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), admitted that Vietnam still does not have experience in university accreditation.

However, according to Dr Pham Xuan Thanh, Deputy Head of the Examination and Education Quality Accreditation Department, one problem is that the data provided by universities is not highly trustworthy. Meanwhile, in the immediate time, Vietnam still does not have enough money to collect all necessary information.

State management agencies have been embarrassed by a lot of questions recently, one of which is whether the accreditation will truly reflect the training quality of universities. The examination and quality accreditation department does not always have answers. University accreditation invariably creates controversy.

However, experts still believe that Vietnam should not delay accrediting universities any longer. One of the reasons, according to Associate Prof Nguyen Phuong Nga, is that this aims to help improve the quality of higher education.

Nga said that the MOET’s policy on allowing the establishment of private universities has led to the establishment of a lot of new universities and a big number of students. In 2000, Vietnam had 96 universities, while the number surged to 139 in 2006. Meanwhile, the increase in the number of universities does not mean the improvement of higher education.

In the conference reviewing 10 years of developing higher education held by MOET in late August 2008, participants at the conference all agreed that in the last 10 years, the non-state university system had only got a reputation for a lack of lecturers, poor material facilities and overly high tuition fees.

(Source: Dan tri)