If universities
are relocated to suburb areas, a lot of lecturers may give up their jobs,
because travel expenses will strain their
modest pay, a lecturer of the Hanoi
Economics University
said.

The
lecturer has warned that if universities are forced to move to suburb areas,
the schools will lose many qualified lecturers. He said that the current modest
pay will not be able to persuade the lecturers

Currently,
many talented people are still working as lecturers, because they love teaching
and research. However, their love may have its limits.

With the
current wages, it would take a university lecturer 100 years to save enough
money to buy a car to travel the long distances to schools.

It is still
unclear where the universities will move. However, people guess that it will be
about 100 km from the center of the city, because the land fund in the areas
within 30-40 km from the city center has been exhausted.

In other
countries, big universities are all located far from the city centers. However,
the convenient public transportation means that location is not a problem.

Meanwhile,
in Vietnam
traffic jams occur regularly. Meanwhile, the means of public transport, such as
subway or high speed train, are not available. Therefore, it will be
inconvenient and a waste of time for lecturers to travel so far.

University
lecturers in economics, aged 40 and less, from can find a job at businesses
which can offer them a high pay.

Therefore,
experienced lecturers may leave schools, while only young and inexperienced
will stay, because they do not have the opportunities to take extra jobs.

The income
of university lecturers is surprisingly low.

With the
average fixed salary of 750,000 dong a month, plus allowance and the income
from extra teaching hours, a young lecturer gets 2-3 million dong a month. On
average, a young lecturer teaches 200 hours per annum. In fact, some lecturers
teach even 1000 hours a year, but only
if they are in good health, have many students, and teach subjects which are in
high demand.

With such a
income, in order to buy a Daewoo Matiz, which costs 400 million dong, a
lecturer would have to save money for 100 years.

In order to
earn their living, many young lecturers have to take extra jobs. And it is
clear that these bring them the income which is much higher than the income
from their main teaching, job. In general, 10 percent of lecturers’ income of
comes from universities, while the other 90 percent from extra jobs.

No qualified
lecturer would spend hundreds of millions of dong to buy a car and travel a
long distance just to get 10 percent of his income.

Meanwhile,
the good and high paying jobs can only be found in the city centers. A well
known lecturer can earnthree million dong a day for the teaching at MBA level,

Huong Giang