LookAtVietnam – Right after the decision to raise the ceiling university training tuition, a lot of universities announced they would raise their tuitions to the ceiling levels.

The Ministry of Education and Training has estimated that the expenses for pay for lecturers in technical study branches account for 60 percent of regular expenses (in 2008, the regular expenses were 600,000 dong per student per month).

Therefore, President of the Hanoi University of Technology Nguyen Trong Giang is still complaining that the allowed tuition increase will only help the university get additional money for basic training and upgrade laboratories which have become too old and backward.

However, Giang said that in order to attract more students, the university will consider setting up suitable tuition levels: hot study branches will have higher tuition levels, while faculties which attract fewer students will have lower levels.

The Hanoi University of Pharmacy also plans to raise tuition to the ceiling level. The university’s President Le Viet Hung said that the currently applied ceiling tuition level of 180,000 dong is only high enough to cover 20 percent of training expenses, while the university has been relying on the state budget. Therefore, the tuition increase will be enough to upgrade equipment.

Tran Manh Dung, President of Odonto-Stomatology University, which is listed among the study branches which have the highest training costs, said that the university is collecting 170,000 dong per month only, not enough to pay lecturers.

“The university plans to increase tuition from 2009-2010, but the increase will be designed in the way so that this will not cause shocks to students,” Dung said.

President of the University of Transport Tran Dac Su said that raising tuition is what universities have been wishing to do for many years.

“However, as the majority of students are from the countryside, we will still need to thoroughly consider tuition increases,” Su said.

…while committing to improve teaching quality

Leaders of many universities have complained that even when they raise the tuitions to the ceiling levels, the tuitions will still not be high enough to cover all expenses. President of Thai Binh Medical University Luong Xuan Hien said that the prices of materials for students’ experiments have been increasing continuously. Previously, every student could practice on one fish, while two students now have to share the same fish.

When asked if training quality will improve when universities increase tuitions, President of Da Nang University of Technology Tran Van Nam said that with higher tuitions, universities will be able to make heavier investment in modernising material facilities.

Nam said that one of the functions of technology study branches is to regularly update students about achievements in the world. However, as universities lack money, they have to use backward machines and equipment, with which universities can only provide low-quality training.

Universities’ leaders, while believing that the higher tuitions will give them more ‘tools’ to improve teaching quality, said that universities need to make public their collection of money and spending.

VietNamNet/Dat Viet