According to the General Statistics Office, there are 71.5 university or junior college students per every 10,000 people in Mekong River Delta. This is the lowest percentage of university and junior college students compared with other regions in the country.

The population census in 2009 showed that four million Vietnamese people, or five percent of the total population, never went to school. The percentage of people aged 15 and above who did not receive any technical training was 86.7 percent. Most of them were from the Mekong Delta (93.4 percent), while the lowest percentage was found in the Red River Delta (80.6 percent).

The Mekong River Delta includes 13 provinces and cities, from Long An to Ca Mau, with the total population of 17,213,400. At the conference held on December 4, 2010 in Can Tho City, where Mekong River Delta’s provinces discussed the human resources development, a report showed that 4.9 percent of the labor force had never gone to school and 22.5 percent had not finished primary school.

An Giang is the most populated province in the Mekong Delta – with 2,149,200 people. It is also the rice granary of the country. Meanwhile, according to the provincial authorities’ report, by 2009, 10.3 percent of people aged 15 and above had never gone to school, while 31.7 percent had not finished primary school. Meanwhile, 15 percent of workers in Tra Vinh province had never gone to school or had not finished primary school.

On average, up to 6.9 percent of people aged 15 and above in the Mekong River Delta had never gone to school (nearly one million people) and 26.7 percent had not finished primary school (3.5 million). It is clear that the number of uneducated people in the region is worryingly high, 4.5 million.

Despite the advantages in natural conditions, the Delta remains the weakest region in terms of its level of education. In order to help develop the regional economy, it is necessary to improve the quality of human resources. The most important task for the immediate time is to eradicate illiteracy and popularize primary education, i.e. to persuade parents to send their children to school and prevent drop-outs. However, these are not found among the current objectives for the Delta region.

the high percentages of uneducated people means that most workers are unskilled. 94.2 percent of people aged 15 and above have never undergone any vocational training. The figure is 74.5 percent in Tra Vinh province.

For the whole Mekong Delta, the figure is 93.4 percent. The remaining percentage has only gont through short training courses. Only 2.6 percent of the population received education at the level of junior college or higher. But the majority graduate from in-service training courses.

According to the Ministry of Education and Training, there are 11 universities in the Mekong Delta, one school branch and 27 junior colleges. In 2010, there were 166,111 students in the whole region. What is noteworthy is that the ratio of in-service students in relation to regular students is very high. At the Tra Vinh University, the proportion is 177.9 percent.

According to the General Statistics Office, there are 71.5 university or junior college students per every 10,000 people in theMekong River Delta. This is the lowest percentage compared with other regions in the country. The figures are 370 students per 10,000 people in Red River Delta, 108/10,000 in midland and northern mountainous areas, 169/10,000 in the central coastal areas and the north of the central region, and 344/10,000 in the east of the northern region.

Workers’ low qualifications can explain why the productivity and the income per capita of the Mekong River Delta are still lower than in other regions.

Source: Nguoi lao dong