VietNamNet Bridge – The news that Vietnam will rank its universities has made students eager for the accreditation. Meanwhile, headmasters of universities seem to be resistant.

Tuan said that the saying, in existence for many years, proves to be unfair to many universities. Therefore, Tuan welcomes the university accreditation to eliminate the unfairness.

Tuan related that his brother, who graduated from the IT Faculty of Hanoi National University in 2006, failed to get a job just because his final rival graduated from the University of Technology. When saying ‘goodbye’ to his brother, the employer said that he did not choose Tuan’s brother because he thought that a student of the University of Technology would be more qualified than a student from Hanoi National University.

There has been no survey about the abilities of students of universities to find out which universities have better students. However, Nga, the director of a private-run business in Hanoi, admitted that if she had to choose either a candidate from the Economics University and Commercial University for the post of accountant, she would choose the one from the former university, as ‘Economics University sounds more okay’.

Vietnam ranking universities based on entrance exam marks

Besides the method of ranking universities based on ‘feelings’ like that, universities have also been ranked based on the marks students get on university entrance examinations.

According to Deputy Minister of Education and Training Banh Tien Long, there are three groups of universities based on entrance exam marks. The first group, gathering top universities, only enrolls students who have very high marks on the examinations (8 marks at least for each subject). The second group comprises universities which gather students with medium marks, and the third, those students with marks just a little higher than the floor level.

However, reality has shown that excellent students at high schools may not be excellent students at universities, and vice versa. Therefore, if only considering the entrance exam marks, many students could be missing deserved opportunities.

Students want accreditation, headmasters don’t

While students are enthusiastic about university accreditation, their headmasters are worried. That explains why only 20 of 173 universities have submitted reports about their universities – namely, the documents to which the Ministry of Education and Training will refer to make accreditation decisions.

The headmaster of a local university said that if accreditation results are announced, the university will find it more difficult to enroll students.

In fact, headmasters have been told that they should not be too worried about accreditation. A survey conducted by US News at California University in 2007 found out that only 17.6% of students chose universities based on university accreditation, rejecting the opinion that university accreditation is the most important thing in the choices of students.

(Source: Dan tri)