Continuing studying at universities is the choice of most of the high
school graduates in Vietnam. However, only 16 percent of them pass the
university entrance exams and enroll in universities. Meanwhile, in South Korea,
about 50 percent of high school graduates decide not to take the exams to
universities. However, the proportion of students passing the university
entrance exams is very high at 91 percent.



While Vietnam sets high requirements on students entering universities, it
loosens the requirements on university graduates.



Nguyen Thanh Tung from the University for Water Resources’ Informatics
Center said that the training of information technology (IT) officers has been
carried out in a massive scale. Schools try to train as many IT students as
possible, but they do not attach special attention to the quality of bachelors.



That explains why many IT bachelors and engineers, after 4-5 years
studying at universities, cannot work well like the workers who only experience
six-month or one-year training course at Aptech, a programmer training center.



Also according to Tung, universities all have IT faculty, but they are
still seriously lacking lecturers. In the past, five lecturers took care for
15-20 students. Meanwhile, the five lecturers now have to take responsibility
for the number of students which is three times higher.



The Prime Minister has recently approved the plan to turn Vietnam into an
IT power which says that from now to 2020, Vietnam will have one million IT
engineers, 80 percent of them will be capable enough to work for the
international market.



However, according to Nguyen Nhat Quang, Director of Hai Hoa Software
Company, the target of one million IT engineers proves to be unfeasible.



The Ministry of Education and Training allows schools to enroll 50,000
students for IT faculties nationwide. As such, in nine more years, Vietnam will
have 450,000 new IT engineers. If counting on the 150,000-200,000 existing IT
engineers, the figure would still be much lower than one million.



Experts have urged the Ministry of Education and Training to take drastic
measures to upgrade the quality of IT officers. They have warned that if Vietnam
only strives to train as many IT officers as possible, while it does not attach
much importance to the quality IT workforce, it will never become an IT power.



Which training way to follow?



When asked to explain why the IT officer training has been going against
the market rules, Dr Le Truong Tung, President of FPT University, said that a
centralized management mechanism is being applied in Vietnam’s education: the
Ministry of Education and Training decides the numbers of students schools can
enroll every year. It organizes national university entrance exams every year to
enroll students for schools. It also set up financial management regulations for
schools.



Tung commented that with the centralized management mechanism, schools
cannot be too bad, but they also cannot be better with a predetermined track.



Tung said that FPT’s principle is to train students who can meet the
requirements of the market. However, this has not been applauded by the Ministry
of Education and Training. FPT once asked the ministry to organize a specific
enrolment campaign every year to find suitable students for the school, but it
has been refused.



Some educators also comment that the State management agencies and
enterprises are looking into two different directions, which has hindered the
training in accordance with the market rules.



Worries have been raised that if schools are given autonomy, they would
try to attract more students by setting low requirements on students. However,
Tung believes that no need to worry about that. The market has its rules which
can prevent the problems.



Source: Buu dien