VietNamNet Bridge – Though the number of university lecturers has doubled in the past 10 years, universities still seriously lack lecturers, which has had a negative affect on training quality.

The lack of university lecturers has been pointed out as the primary reason behind problematic training quality.

Duong Hong Loan, Deputy Chairwoman of the Nguyen Trai University, said that Vietnam has allowed 200 universities to be created in the past two years, while it has not well prepared the teaching staff.

In fact, MOET sets very strict requirements on the ratios of permanent and visiting lecturers at universities. However, the strict requirements themselves have led the universities scrambling to get lecturers from each other. As a result, lecturers have to run between universities to give lecturers, and they do not have time for research, which explains why the syllabus and teaching is not much different than those 20 years ago.

If following MOET’s requirements on the number of permanent lecturers, Nguyen Trai University has to have 60-70 permanent lecturers. However, for the 2008-2009 academic year, the university enrolled only 40 students, and as such Loan believes that it would be a big waste to employ so many permanent lecturers and pay hundreds of millions VND a month for the lecturers (VND4-5mil per lecturer).

Nguyen Tien Luan, Principal of the Nguyen Trai University, also said that it seems to be impossible for even state-owned universities to follow the requirements on the compulsory numbers of permanent lecturers.

According to Le Dinh Dao, Deputy Chairman of Dai Nam University, visiting lecturers remain the choice of many universities simply because of financial problems. The university, for example, has 38 permanent lecturers; each of whom have 300 standard hours a year, which means that the university has to pay VND 4 million a month to each, or VND 60 million a year, including bonuses. Meanwhile, it only has to pay VND 80,000 per period to visiting lecturers, which means VND 24 million a year for 300 teaching hours. It is clear that the money paid to visiting lecturers is only half of the sum paid to permanent lecturers.

Van Ba Thanh, Deputy Principal of the Ha Hoa Tien University, while admitting the lack of permanent lecturers, said that it will take time to have enough permanent lecturers, and for the time being, universities have to rely on visiting lecturers.

Ha Hoa Tien University’s permanent lecturers include 14 associate professors and doctorates, as well as 20 young, newly-employed lecturers. As such, the university is still lacking permanent lecturers.

Bao Anh