Experts have pointed out a lot of problems in the draft law on amending some provisions of the Education Law, including ones on university education quality and the autonomy of universities.

The professor said that Vietnam would be going the wrong way up if it tried to amend the 2005 Education Law before it had the education development strategy outlining what needed to be done and what goals were being targeted.

Phu also said that he cannot see any big changes in the draft law in comparison with the currently valid Education Law, enacted in 2005, except the regulations on the tuition levels students of pedagogical universities have to pay.

He identified a lot of items in the 2005 law which he thinks need to be amended, but have not been mentioned in the draft law, especially the ownership mechanism of people-founded and private universities.

While educational establishments in the world are clearly divided into three kinds, non-profit, semi-profit and profit, most people-founded and private educational establishments in Vietnam are businesses, but this is not made public.

“This is really a dim field, which may cause dangerous misunderstandings and hinder the development of non-state education.

Article No 105 of the 2005 Education Law stipulates that people-founded and private educational establishments have the right to set their own tuition levels. According to Professor Phu, setting tuition fees is like ‘boxing blindfolded’. Students cannot say if the training quality they get is worth 7 million dong or 10 million dong per annum. As students never know the actual value of the school fees they pay, the state needs to keep strict control over the establishments and set standards for training quality.

Professor Phu has proposed the creation of a new education law in parallel with the 2010-2020 education strategy, or the enactment of the law on amending some provisions of the Education Law in parallel with the submission of the University Education Law by 2010, emphasising that the university education proves to be the sector that has the most problems.

Other experts and educators have also pointed out that the draft law does not include amendments of many problematic provisions.

Professor Cao Van Phuong, President of Binh Duong University, believes that it is necessary to remove the frame curriculum scheme and that the Ministry of Education and Training should not assume the work of universities in enrolling students.

For example, the national university, which targets training talents in technology, should organise special exams to find talents. Meanwhile, the enrolment of normal students in universities ought to be done several times a year to help ease the current hard pressure on the national university entrance exams. Under the current enrolment scheme, students have been suffering, since those who fail an exam have to wait one full year to try again.

Agreeing that the Ministry of Education and Training needs to give more power to universities, Doctor Bui Xuan Hai, Dean of Commercial Law under the HCM City Law University, said that it is necessary to remove the draft provision: “Minister of Education and Training stipulates the compilation, selection, examination, approval and use of curriculums”.

Hai has also suggested rewriting the article about the conditions for setting up universities. The law needs to provide clear requirements about material facilities, lecturers and curriculums. Currently, a lot of universities with poor material facilities and lack of permanent lecturers still enroll students.

VietNamNet/NLD