A mini survey conducted by VietNamNet’s reporters on the relation between lecturers and students showed that students do not want to contact lecturers, while lecturers are ‘afraid’ of being contacted by students.

Students of the University of Industries enjoy their break time on the university yard

Contacting lecturers to know… exams’ questions?

Tran Van Thang, a student of the Civil and Industrial Engineering Faculty under the University of Civil Engineering, said that he does not contact lecturers regularly. “Lecturers may think that we try to meet them just because we want to know the exams’ questions,” he said.

Currently, students contact lecturers mostly through phones (45.7%), while 25% of students contact via email and 25% meet lecturers directly.

Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Quang Vien, Dean of the Civil and Industrial Engineering Faculty under the University of Civil Engineering, said that the faculty encourages lecturers to give their mobile phones and addresses to students.

However, Vien said that a lot of students ask lecturers to give mobile phones, but very few students meet lecturers to discuss questions to improve their knowledge. A student called and asked to lower his mark from 7 to 4, so that he can retake the exam, which gives him the opportunity to get higher marks.

The survey also showed that only 21.2% of the students who make regular contacts with teachers aim to improve their knowledge.

Associate Professor Dr. Do Van Nhuong, Deputy Dean of the Biology and Agriculture Techniques under the Hanoi Pedagogical University, said: “My doors have never been closed to students. Students can contact me at any time until 11:30pm every day.”

Students nowadays ‘learn to take exams,’ therefore, the exam preparation period proves to be the moment, when students make the most contact with teachers.

“However, instead of discussing with teachers to understand the lessons more deeply, students simply ask how to answer to A question, and how to answer to B question?” Nhuong said, adding that some lazy students do not even have anything to ask.

Nguyen Van Hien, MA, Lecturer of the Biology Faculty, Head of the Administration Division under the Hanoi Pedagogical University, said in his class, only 40% of students keep contact with lecturers, while 60% keep quiet.

Credit-based students don’t have to know teachers?

The survey showed that 2% of students cannot remember the names of any teachers who once taught them. 59% of students can remember less than ten names, 39% can remember more than 10 names.

“I could not remember the name of the teacher, because he talked about this only once. As I did not contact him, I could not recall his name,” said Trang Nhung, a student of Hanoi University.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Thi Huong, a 5^th year student of the Hanoi National University, and Phan Quang Tung from the Hanoi University of Technology, complained that lecturers are not close to their students.

Of the 80% of students who rarely contact lecturers, 34% of students said that the credit-based students do not really have to contact lecturers, because they need to learn and make research themselves.

62% of students believe that it is very necessary to contact lecturers during the study process, while 22.1% do not know how to contact lecturers, and 20.6% said that the classes are overloaded.

Luu Van