VietNamNet Bridge – “Is business the purpose of Vietnam’s education system?” This question, which was raised a long time ago, is being asked again these days, as the Ministry of Finance has finished compiling the draft mechanism on turning schools into joint-stock companies.

RMIT Vietnam’s students

Meanwhile, another famous economist, Dr Vu Thanh Tu Anh, Director of the Fulbright Economic Teaching Programme (FETP), has warned against turning state-owned schools into joint-stock companies, saying that it would not help settle the main problems of Vietnam’s education system, and would also create problems in access to education.

Leaders of several well-known state universities, when asked about the equitisation policy, said that they are not ready to see their universities turned into joint-stock companies on a trial basis. They have expressed concerns about a decrease in teaching quality, as universities, after they get equitised and operate as businesses, could run after profit and ignore some teaching principles.

Moreover, the universities say that a lot of problems still exist with the scheme of ‘state universities which have financial autonomy’. They think that school equitisation should not be mentioned until the problems can be settled, and a review of the scheme implementation is done.

“It is too dangerous,” said Prof Pham Phu, an educator who has made many studies about education in recent years.

Meanwhile, Tran Thi Ha, now Deputy President of Hoa Binh Private University, formerly an official of the Ministry of Finance working in the field of public policy, said: “Universities will have nothing new without equitisation.”

The director of a securities company thinks that school equitisation would help training establishments to have more self-control in paying salaries and using talents in education, a very important thing in improving education quality.

At the government’s regular meeting in November 2006 in Hanoi, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung instructed the Ministry of Education and Training to draw up the pilot plan on equitising 15-20 universities and junior colleges in the next five years. The prime minister also mentioned the sale of universities’ stakes to foreign strategic investors.

At the forum on joining the WTO and the renovation of Vietnam’s education system on December 11, 2006, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Thien Nhan talked about the action plan for Vietnam’s education system.

Nhan said Vietnam would integrate into international university education in a strong manner and large scale by heightening training quality while creating the most favourable conditions for investors and generating healthy competition for Vietnam’s higher education.

Equitising universities and accepting the participation of the private sector in the field of education proved to be an issue of big interest during a recent online dialogue between the leader of the Education Ministry and Vietnamese people and readers of the Vietnamese Communist Party’s online newspaper.

In early 2009, when the world was facing the global financial crisis, local newspapers reported that the Ministry of Planning and Investment had proposed the government open several fields which had been limited to foreign investors, including education.

VietNamNet