VietNamNet Bridge – Many vocational schools have asked the Ministry of Education and Training to reconsider the enrolment quotas for the vocational training of universities and junior colleges.

Vocational schools find it more difficult nowadays to enroll students

The ‘encroaching’ of universities and junior colleges on vocational training has put big difficulties on the vocational school system.

The same situation is also occurring in HCM City. Despite a lot of efforts, local vocational schools have been meeting a lot of difficulties in enrolment as they have to compete with universities in the locality.

With their advantages, universities can more easily attract students. Some universities even advertise that students at the vocational training level will be automatically able to transfer credits to follow university education and get bachelor’s degrees. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) affirms that the automatic study continuation at the university level is not stipulated in any legal document. Therefore, the announcements by the universities have caused students and their families to misunderstand.

Fearing the dominance of universities in vocational training, a lot of vocational schools have asked the ministry to reconsider the quotas granted to universities and junior colleges in order to help vocational schools settle their current problems. The schools complain that it is very difficult to enroll students for vocational training as students have been lured by universities already.

With the participation of universities and colleges in vocational training, in the last eight years, the vocational training scale has increased from less than 200,000 students to over 600,000 students. The figure is expected to increase further in the coming years. However, the quality of vocational training remains problematic as many graduates still cannot meet the requirements on knowledge and practical skills demanded by the market. Graduates prove to lack the skill of working with modern equipment and have weak communication skills.

Vocational training establishments now have over 300 training branches. The branches which have the biggest training scale are economics, services, management (43% of total students), and industries and construction (25%).

(Source: NLD)