LookAtVietnam – University lecturers rather would teach more hours than write syllabuses saying the pay is small for a job that requires such brain power.

President of the HCM City University of Social Sciences and Humanity Vo Van Sen said the number of syllabuses accounts for just 40 percent of total needed.

Dean of Philosophy Faculty under the HCM City University of Education Trinh Sam said of their the syllabuses in use 70 percent had been developed by the university itself.

President of HCM City Law University Mai Hong Quy said they compiled 40 books of learning material for students but needed 70. As a result, its students use Criminal Law Book Volume 1 written by the university, but use Criminal Law Book Volume 2 written by the Hanoi Law University.

The situation is more serious at commercially funded universities. Professor Bui Khanh The, deputy president of the HCM City Foreign Languages and Information Technology (Huflit), admitted a lack of syllabuses was the biggest weakness of this type of university. Lecturers instead rely on syllabuses from other universities.

Lecturers happier with teaching than writing syllabuses

Low pay is believed to be the main reason stopping lecturers writing syllabuses.

Mai Hong Quy of the HCM City Law University said that every lecturer with master’s degree gets 60,000 dong per page of books, a very low pay level for such a difficult job.

According to Vo Van Sen from the HCM City University of Social Sciences and Humanity, every syllabus compiler gets 7-9 million dong for every book he writes. Meanwhile, it takes him six months to one year, or even two years to write a book. The lecturer could expect a similar amount just for teaching 50 hours.

One syllabus author explained that publishing houses pay 8-10 percent of a book’s sale price to authors. It means authors get 2-5 million dong but only if the book has sold 200-500 copies.

In additions university funds reserved specifically for syllabus development remain limited. Now, credit based training schemes are encouraging teachers to write syllabuses but budgets are still too low.

It has lead to a vicious circle - lecturers need to have fewer teaching hours to reserve more time for writing syllabuses but, as a result, universities have had to recruit new lecturers to cover classes.

It leaves Universities poorer and means they have even less funds to reward syllabus writers.

VietNamNet/NLD