VietNamNet Bridge – Even students who follow study curricula specifically designed for talented students prove to be unable to meet the requirements of employers.

A lesson at the HCM City National University

Phan Tri Dung, Director of Petech, said that students of the programme for the talented at the HCM City University of Technology who came to train at Petech showed the same capability as students of normal study programmes.

Learning hard, but syllabus not practical

That explains why a lot of students, though finishing a specific programme for the talented, still find it difficult to find jobs.

Nguyen Linh, who graduated from the special programme of the HCM City Natural Sciences University as BA of Physics, had to place advertisement pieces on the Internet to find a job as a tutor, because he could not find a better job.

“Very few of my classmates can find jobs suitable to their study branch, while they now have to jump into other fields, trading or business administration,” Linh said.

Linh said that he feels lucky to have found a job as a supervisor at Tan Son Nhat Airport, which in no way has a relationship with his study branch.

Linh said that the study syllabus was very heavily theoretical. As students did not have an opportunity to do practical activities, they cannot meet the requirements set by employers.

Le Trung, who has a Bachelor’s of IT from a talented and gifted programme, complained that the syllabus was very heavy, and included too many things. Trung had to learn a lot of things, from programming, network administration, ADSL and many other things, but he does not have deep knowledge about anything.

Students graduating from social science faculties seem to have very few opportunities to get good jobs. Phuong Ha, a talented student in history, said that she had to learn harder than other students, so she had no time to learn foreign languages. Ha related that employers all require good skills of foreign languages, but she cannot meet the requirement.

Dr Le Huu Phuoc, Deputy Headmaster of the HCM City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, admitted that the talented bachelors of literature and history find it very hard to get jobs.

All the said factors can explain why the programme for the talented has not been really attractive to students. Dr Truong Chi Hien, Deputy Headmaster of the HCM City University of Technology, said that there are many students who get 21 marks on university entrance exams who are considered talented students. However, there are still not enough students for the programme for the talented.

More and more courses for talented open

Despite the low attractiveness of programmes for the talented, universities still try to enroll students for the programmes. In 2006, the HCM City University of Natural Sciences enrolled 90 students for three branches, while the figure has risen to 110 in 2008. Similarly, the HCM City University of Technology enrolled 160 students in 206 and 194 students in 2008. The figures for the HCM City Social Sciences and Humanities are 80 and 94.

Meanwhile, the investment for every talented student is VND15mil per year, or three times more than the investment for a normal student. HCM City National University has estimated total expenses for gifted programmes of VND16bil in 2009.

Meanwhile, Dung said that there is no need to keep the programmes as they cannot produce really talented students for the national economy.

(Source: NLD)