VietNamNet Bridge – The number of students who actually took the university entrance exams in 2009 was just 70 percent of the registered number. Universities have reported that they lost 18 billion dong due to the no-shows.

Trade University got 27,000 registrations for the A-group exam. In order to prepare for the high number of registered examinees, the university had to prepare 1,000 exam rooms and hired 2,350 people to work as exam supervisors. However, due to the virtual examinees (74 percent of registered examinees sat for exams in Hanoi and the figure was 44 percent in Vinh city), the university incurred the loss of 1.3 billion dong.

President of the Trade University Nguyen Bach Khoa said that besides the money spent on exam rooms, exam questing printing, the university also had to pay more for exam-paper marking – 1,000 dong per paper more than last year.

The Hanoi Foreign Trade University did not have many registrations, just 6,000, (only students who really believe they have high learning capability apply for the university). However, the university still lost 350 million dong from the exam due to the high percentage of virtual exam takers, at 50 percent.

Le Thi Thu Thuy, Head of the Training Division of the Foreign Trade University, complained that the examination fee of 20,000 dong (paid by the examinee) was not high enough to cover expenses for exam questions, exam supervisors, exam paper markers and other expenses.

The HCM City Economics University has estimated that it lost 900 million dong because of virtual students.

Experienced enrolment experts say that in general, the rate of virtual students is 25-30 percent. However, universities still have to prepare enough rooms, supervisors and exam question papers for 100 percent of registered examinees. The total number of virtual students on this year’s exams was 600,000, resulting in at least 18 billion dong in losses for universities.

What to do to stop virtual registration?

According to Dr Tran Thi Ha, Director of the University Education Department under the Ministry of Education and Training, there is only one solution to stop virtual registration: promulgate a regulation that every student can make one registration to one university or junior college only.

However, Ha said that such a regulation, though it could help universities avoid losses, would put difficulties on students. In principle, students have to submit registrations to take university entrance exams in late March, while the exams do not take place until July. At the time of registering, students and their parents still do not know which university they should take the exams for. Therefore, they should be given more choices, or they will be at a disadvantage.

In fact, there is another solution to help minimise the percentage of virtual registrations and help universities avoid losses: asking examinees to pay higher examination fees. Universities have suggested raising the exam registration fee from 40,000 dong to 50,000 dong and raising the examination fee from 20,000 to 30,000 dong per examinee. However, the suggestion has not got the approval of the Ministry of Finance.

VietNamNet/DV