LookAtVietnam – Lecturers cannot live on the salaries but have to do extra jobs to earn a living.

Being a state-owned university lecturer with a doctorate, Tran Nam, who has 14 years of experience in his job, and is now working for the HCM City University of Natural Sciences under the HCM City National University, gets seven million dong ($411) a month from the job of teaching at the university. The income includes the fixed monthly salary of 2.2 million dong ($129) and pay for other work he does for the university.

“I have teaching hours of three or four classes at the university per week. I also mentor three to five postgraduates who are studying for MA degrees. Sometimes I mark postgraduates’ theses. All these jobs bring 90 million dong per annum to me, which means that I have seven million dong per month,” Nam said.

“This is just enough for basic needs, while I have to take extra jobs to get money for purchasing a house and my savings,” he added.

Though having high degrees and stable jobs at universities, lecturers cannot live on their teaching jobs, while they have to do many extra jobs, such as teaching extra classes, to earn a living.

Le Thac Hoa, MA, who has 10 years of experience in teaching English at many universities, but is now working for a company, related that he once earned 20 million dong ($1,176) a month. However, in order to obtain that sum of money, he had to work very hard.

“I had 16 teaching periods a day (one period last 45 minutes) and I taught from morning until late evening, from 6 am to 9 pm. I taught seven days per week. I had no time to see my wife and children. My lunchtime was just long enough to eat one loaf of bread,” Hoa said, adding that he could not get more than 60,000 dong for every period of teaching.

Scientific research, a kind of wasting time?

In principle, scientific research is compulsory for lecturers as it supplements their lectures. However, university lecturers nowadays do not have time for scientific research, simply because they spend all of their time teaching at universities and doing extra jobs so they have enough to live.

One lecturer joked that it is really a waste of time to do scientific research, and that he prefers spending time on a more useful job – earning money.

An associate professor, who once worked as a literature lecturer at the HCM City University of Education, said that his pension is less than five million dong. However, he can earn 15 million dong a month if he teaches extra classes.

Last year, the Economics University under Hanoi National University suggested a new ‘open’ salary scheme, under which excellent lecturers could be paid as much as $5,000 a month. The daring suggestion stirred the public, as it was thought it could create a breakthrough in the renovation of education in state-owned universities.

The person who suggested the daring scheme was Associate Professor Doctor Phung Xuan Nha, President of the Economics University.

Explaining his idea, Nha said that as the official pay for lecturers is now too low, most university lecturers have to teach extra classes to students preparing to take university entrance exams, while they do not have time for scientific research. The low pay has prompted many teachers to ‘exchange high exam marks for money’ and write theses for students to get money, which has created a distorted image of teachers in the eyes of students and society.

However, Nha’s suggestion has not been acknowledged by higher levels; for the meantime, teachers will continue to have to scrape by the best they can.

VietNamNet/SGTT