VietNamNet Bridge – “I personally do not support the equitisation plan as I think a lot of problems will arise,” said Prof Dr Hoang Van Chau, President of the Hanoi Foreign Trade University.

Prof Dr Hoang Van Chau, President of the Hanoi Foreign Trade University

Equitisation should not proceed until there is training quality examination

The professor said:

The state should consult universities’ staffs and lecturers before going ahead with the equitisation plan. I personally do not advocate the plan on turning universities into joint-stock companies.

Once becoming joint-stock companies, universities will run after profit; I mean, they will try to enroll as many students as possible and grant as many degrees as they can. Students will not have to learn, they will just have to pay money to get degrees.

In equitised universities, university presidents will decide on the granting of degrees, therefore, wrongdoings may occur.

Once equitised, universities will run after profit, while ignoring the necessary steps to ensure training quality. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, there is no strict mechanism which examines quality.

I do not know of any country in the world which equitises universities and pays dividends to shareholders.

Turning universities into joint-stock companies means commercialising education. Every year, universities will have to pay dividends to shareholders, which will lead to the fact that education serves business purposes.

Autonomy needed for universities

The state should require universities to train certain numbers of students at low cost to serve the poor or special subjects.

Meanwhile, they need to have the right to decide how many students to enroll, how much money to collect for tuition, after considering their capability and society’s demand.

In this case, universities collect tuition fees so they can make further investment and raise incomes, not to share profit.

Equitisation? We should not be hasty

The Hanoi Foreign Trade University is one of the four universities (together with the Hanoi University, Hanoi National Economics University and HCM City Economics University) that have been allowed to implement the financial self-control mechanism. With the mechanism, the university has to arrange money for its operations itself.

However, in fact, the university still collects VND1.8mil/student/year in tuition fees, like all other state universities.

The university does not have the right to make decisions in many cases. For example, it cannot set higher tuition fee levels for foreign students.

Every year, the university collects over VND50bil in tuition fees for both regular and in-service training. Of this amount, VND20bil is paid to lecturers.

And until we have a clear mechanism for financially self-controlled universities, we should not be too hasty in thinking up another new mechanism.

Kieu Oanh