LookAtVietnam – Privately founded universities are giving the thumbs up to pupils marking teachers while state universities meanwhile are not so keen.

In addition, cameras have been installed in all classrooms to record teaching hours with the aim of providing proof to compare with student comments.

President of Lac Hong University Tran Hanh said they have been delighted with the results.

“The students are really very objective and constructive. Our school will put the information about the assessment on our official website which will serve as reference to assess the capability of lecturers,” he said

Hanh said last year, the lecturers of the university were marked with ‘average’ and higher levels.

While most students still hesitate to contact lecturers to discuss teaching methods, students of the Hai Phong University have become used to discussion via email with the university’s president about the quality of lecturers.

Tran Huu Nghi, the university’s president, said 90 percent of students say they are satisfied with teaching quality.

“The comments and notes made by students will be sent to faculties or directly to lecturers, so that lecturers can adjust their teaching method,” Nghi said, adding that the most important goal of the assessment is to improve education quality.

Meanwhile, state owned universities say they are facing difficulties in getting comments from students. They claim the problem lies in the fact students think their opinions won’t be useful and also wonder how they will benefit from their feedback.

The Hanoi University of Education, for example, collects students’ opinions about lecturers’ quality two or three times in every school year.

Nguyen Van Dong, a 3^rd grade student of the Hanoi Industry University remembered vaguely that he once filled in an “opinion collection note” together with many other documents.

“I really think that this is of no use,” he said.

The HCM City Agriculture and Forestry University has been doing well with the “students-grading-lecturers” programme, but it is facing financial difficulties.

“This is a very good work, but it is really costly,” said Huynh Thanh Hung, President of the university.

“We have to spend money in printing opinion collection notes, arrange labour for this work, and process information,” he said.

In order to save money, the university has decided that only the lecturers, who have the ‘satisfaction rate’ of less than 75 percent, will have to be assessed again next time.

Hung said that nearly all lecturers get the satisfaction rate of over 75 percent after three or four times of assessment.

As per request by the Ministry of Education and Training, the lecturer assessment must be wrapped up and reported to the ministry no later than October 25.

In 2008, only 38 universities sent the reports.

VietNamNet/DT