LookAtVietnam – ‘New model’, ‘high-quality’ were words used by Director of the University Education Department Tran Thi Ha, when talking about the plan to build four universities of international standard.

Director of the University Education Department under the Ministry of Education and Training Tran Thi Ha

At a recent working session, the French side has committed to give 100 million euros in 10-year support to the Hanoi University of Science and Technology. The sum of money is enough to train 400 doctors who will work as lecturers and research staffs for the university. The French side will also send lecturers to the university who will give lectures and undertake management work.

MOET is moving ahead with a plan to establish two universities of international standard in Da Nang and Can Tho cities, whose strategic partners will be the Da Nang and Can Tho universities. Besides, strategic partners will also be selected from the US, Japan and Russia. The Government will spend $400 million sourced from loans from the World Bank and Asia Development Bank to build the four universities.

Students of the universities will be capable of paying high tuition fees?

The goal of the universities is not to set up high tuition fees, though the tuition levels may be higher than the levels applied by other universities.

In other words, these will be universities for excellent, talented and capable students. Therefore, the most important factor for Vietnamese students is learning capability, not financial capacity. The talented students who cannot pay tuition fees will be granted scholarship and given other support so that they can keep studying at the universities.

Meanwhile, foreign students who study at the universities will have to pay tuition fees at the levels commensurate with teaching quality.

What are the differences between the four universities and other existing universities in Vietnam?

These will be non-profit state-owned universities which provide high-quality education striving for international standard by 2020. The universities will have organisational structures of their own and operate under a specific mode to be stipulated by the Prime Minister. The four universities may be a little different in operation scheme, but all will have high autonomy. They will be the first state-owned universities with foreign managers.

There is also another big difference between the four universities and the operational universities: The four universities will operate under the model of modern universities in the world and meet international standards from curriculums, teaching methods, assessment methods and training management. These will be research-oriented universities with the ratio of university/post university training at 1:1, much higher than that of operational universities.

Why has the Ministry of Education and Training decided to build new universities instead of developing universities of international standard from existing universities?

The Ministry of Education and Training and experts made the conclusion after conducting a thorough survey and realising that the current conditions, the financial resources, labour force and management method of current universities are not good enough to develop them into universities of international standard. A feasible solution is to take full advantage of the infrastructure, current labour force and the support of foreign partners to build universities which operate under a new model and aim at high-quality training.

But how can we obtain enough lecturers for the four universities within a short period?

In the first years of operation, 50-80 percent of professors of partner universities will undertake the teaching. During that time, the training of Vietnamese lecturers will be carried out. The percentage of foreign lecturers will decrease to 30 percent by the 10^th year of operation, when Vietnam has enough lecturers.

VietNamNet/TT