VietNamNet Bridge – The economic crisis has forced many Vietnamese families to change their plans to send children abroad for study.

Students are asking for information about training courses

However, the economic downturn has changed their plan. To help reduce the financial burden on the family, Hien has to seek a full scholarship from an US university. Hers is not the only case.

Hien’s classmate, Huyen Trang, has decided to cancel plans overseas study. Trang will study at one of the Vietnam campuses of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), and then transfer credits to Australia to complete the last two years of the training course there.

Nguyen Lan Anh related that she has been persuaded by her parents to begin her study at Vietnamese universities. Her parents will later decide if they can send Anh abroad.

Anh said that many families have been affected by the economic downturn. As parents’ business encounter difficulty, they cannot afford overseas study for their children.

Nguyen Thanh Thuy, a 12^th year student of Chu Van An High School in Hanoi. will stay at home for one year to prepare financially for overseas study. Meanwhile, Thuy is applying for scholarships from foreign universities

“Some of my friends have finished high school in the US and then returned to Vietnam to study at international universities in Vietnam. Some of them plan to go to work for a year to earn money before they return to the US to resume study,” Thuy said.

“They have different reasons, but they all relate to the financial problem. Some families sent children abroad after they got big money from stock investments. As they lost money when the market crashed, they stopped funding their children’s overseas study,” she added.

Ha Viet Hang, a professional overseas study consultant, said that a lot of families have been forced to change their aspirations for their childrens’ study by the financial crisis. The number of students who inquire about studying in Singapore has decreased significantly, for example. It is simply because many families that have aimed to send their children to countries with lower study costs have unstable budgets.

Financial support is cut

It is now really very difficult to obtain scholarships, as universities tend to cut scholarships for international students.

Offering attractive scholarships and easier conditions than the US and Europe, South Korea has been the destination for many Vietnamese students in the last few years

Previously, some big South Korean universities, including Changwon, Chosun, Inha and Dongeui routinely gave 100 percent tuitions to foreign students who followed post-university courses, and 30-35 percent stipends to university students. However, since the autumn semester of 2009, they have only exempted tuition for 20-30 percent of the cases they accepted before. Other students must arrange 50 to 100 percent of the tuition themselves.

Nguyen Tuan Thien, a mathematics student in Austria, said that the Austrian budget for mathematics research projects has been cut by 90 percent.

In the US, the centre of the ‘financial storm’, universities are both cutting budgets sharply and reducing teaching assistantships. Vietnamese students who have applied to lots of American colleges are only harvesting offers of admission, not scholarships.

Dinh Cong Bang, now studying in Florida (US), explained that the money granted to international students comes from two main sources, companies and states’ budgets. As companies have been in difficulty, they have cut grants to universities, while the governments of many states have also cut the sums of money poured into universities.

America’s top school, Harvard is witnessing the loss of up to 30 percent of the total $40 billion in its endowment fund, while Princeton University calculates it will lose $5 billion.

Dang Duc Viet at Clemson University said that Clemson has cut a lot of research projects and scholarships this year. Viet himself has seen a seven percent reduction in his full scholarship.

Lan Huong