LookAtVietnam – Non-state universities are now worried that they will not have enough students. Non-state universities are now worried that they will not have enough students, because state-owned schools plan to enroll high numbers of second-choice students. They prefer state-owned schools to non-state schools.

Most non-state universities this year set low required grades just equal to the floor mark. The floor mark, announced every year by the Education and Training Ministry, is the minimum grade that students must make on their university entrance exams to register at an institution. Students who fail the exams to their first-choice universities have the right to apply to other universities with lower required marks as their second choice.

Despite the low requirements, only 166 students chose Hung Vuong University as their first choice and passed the exam. The university is allowed to enroll 100 students in every department.

Of the 166 students, only three passed the civil engineering department exam and only six passed exams to the post-harvesting technology study branch. Only nine passed exams in hospital administration, but the university had planned to enroll 150.

The students who passed the exams are also still unsure if they will study at the university or not. Therefore, the school has to announce it will enroll a high number of second-choice students.

Van Hien University only has 84 students who passed exams to the university as their first choice. Departments of culture, Vietnam studies, and English only have one student in each study branch. Only two students have passed exams to information technology and nine passed exams in sociology. Meanwhile, the school plans to enroll 60-90 students for every study branch, so it hopes to enroll 1000 second-choice students.

Hong Bang International University is facing the same problem: it must enroll 2150 second-choice students because the numbers of first-choice students passing the exams is too modest. HCM City University of Technology (Hutech) has also announced that it has thousands of seats for students who register to study at the school as their second choice.

Van Lang University has announced it will enroll 600 students as their second choice, while Huflit plans to enroll 562 students.

Representatives of non-state schools have expressed concern that they may not enroll enough students this year, because they must compete with state-owned schools that are now also vying for second-choice students.

Analysts note that high tuition is a main reason that many students, even though they pass the exams, do not really want to study at non-state universities.

Nguyen Thi Mai Binh, Head of the Training Division of Hung Vuong University, explained that the tuition set by the university for this year has increased by 1000 dong per hour over 2009. As such, tuition for some study branches has increased to over 10 million dong a year.

At Hong Bang International University, tuition for business administration studies stands at 19.2 million dong a year, while tuitions of over 12 million dong are set for other branches.

At Huflit, tuition is 11.3-11.5 million dong a year, but, in previous years, first year students only had to pay 9.9 million dong, and others paid 8.1 million dong.

Many other reasons have been cited to explain the unattractiveness of non-state schools, especially problems in training quality, material facilities and teaching staff. Therefore, Luu Thanh Tam, Deputy President of Hutech, reports that non-state universities will have no other choice than to upgrade training quality. Only when they have confidence in the quality of the school, will students choose non-state-owned institutions.

Source: Nguoi lao dong