A lot of changes have been announced for this year’s enrolment season: universities have announced new training branches, while the tuitions set by people founded universities will be made public.

Over the last two years, the HCM City University of Social Sciences and Humanities under the HCM City National University has enrolled students for the urban studies and social work.

According to the university, the opening of the urban studies proves to be the necessity in the context of the urban development. Vietnam needs to have employees who take urban management socially, not architecturally.

“We believe that these are the study branches of full potential in the near future,” said Dr. Pham Tan Ha, Deputy Head of the HCM City University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

The HCM City Agriculture and Forestry University has also opened a new study branch in finance management. The university’s leaders said that finance and banking study branches have been opened recently in many universities; however, it seems that the training of the management personnel in the field has not been given much attention. The new study branch proves to be very necessary not only for currently, but for the future as well.

According to the statistics by the job website www.vietnamworks.com, in the last while, the ‘hottest’ jobs on the labour market were sales, application techniques, accountancy/finance and administration/secretary.

While universities have opened new training branches, they have also closed some training branches because they cannot enroll enough students. The HCM City Agriculture and Forestry University, for example, has ‘registered a death’ to agriculture and rural development promotion, and agricultural business, though Vietnam is seriously lacking the personnel in these fields.

People founded universities have announced that they will make public the tuition levels about the university and junior college enrolment in 2009, which will come out in March.

According to the Dong Do People Founded University, the students of architecture, electronics and telecommunications, construction, and foreign languages will have to pay VND 520,000/month/student, while the students of other study branches will have to pay VND 500,000 a month.

As for the Chu Van An Univerisity, the highest tuition level is VND 6.5 million per academic year (10 months). According to the Deputy Head of the Planning and Finance Division of the Nguyen Hang University, the VND 650,000/month tuition will be collected from students of construction work architecture, construction work technique, electric and electronic technique, and information technology, while students of other study branches will have to pay VND 590,000 a month.

The tuitions for junior training (three year training) are as follows: VND 520,000/month for information technology, and VND 490,000/month for other study branches.

Meanwhile, the Hai Phong People Founded University said that the university will apply the single tuition level for all training branches at VND 790,000 a month. Students will have to pay VND 7.9 million a month and pay tuition every semester.

The Thang Long University will apply three levels of tuitions for different study branches. Students will also have to pay VND 3 million per training course (four years) to help improve material facilities of the university.

VietNamNet, TP