There’s fast growth in the scope and number of college-level training programs conducted jointly with foreign partners. VietNamNet Bridge – There’s fast growth in the scope and number of college-level training programs conducted jointly with foreign partners. Vietnamese universities have found them to be a big money-maker. Unfortunately, training quality often takes a back seat, reports Tuoi Tre newspaper.

It used to be that joint training programmes sponsored by Vietnamese universities in cooperation with foreign institutions were reserved only for graduate students. In 2010, they’ve proliferated to the undergraduate level.

Who signs up for these joint training programmes?

The most common characteristic of the joint training programmes is that they are very “open.” In general, students only have to graduate from high schools or get the minimum passing grade in the university entrance exams. Sometimes, even if they don’t qualify for university, students can still follow the joint training programmes in ‘pre-university classes.’

In principle, the students are required to have sufficient language skills to follow a lecture in English or, in a few cases, another foreign language. However, in reality, the language requirement is “flexible.” Often students are allowed to “owe” foreign language certificates. Some joint training programmes reserve one or two semesters to teach foreign languages to students.

The University of Foreign Languages, a unit of Hanoi National University, for example, does not require students to demonstrate French skills when they enter certain training courses. Instead it sets aside 900 hours to teach French to students, so that they can understand lectures in French.

Some programmes offer ‘international’ masters degrees that are conducted entirely in Vietnamese.

Thus it is often said that the most important qualification for admission to the joint training programs is the wherewithal to pay high tuition fees, and it is commonly thought that students only enter these programs if they fail the entrance exams to Vietnamese state owned universities.

Who are the foreign partners?

At a workshop at the Hanoi University of Technology, a representative of the school briefed on its joint training programmes and the foreign partners in the programmes, including some American schools. After he finished, a high ranking official from the US Government-sponsored Vietnam Education Fund (VEF) said: “I regret that a leading university in Vietnam like the Hanoi University of Technology can only find such mediocre partners.”

The Hanoi University of Technology is not alone in this regard. “Most of the foreign partners in the joint training programmes with Vietnam are ordinary, average universities, which do not have high status in their own countries,” an education expert noted after looking at the list of 112 joint training programmes licensed by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET).

The expert added that though there are many well known partner institutions from France, Germany and Belgium, most of the partners from the US and Australia are not well known in their home countries.

Another close observer emphasizes that there are exceptions. Both the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia) and Temple University (US) have well-established and highly rated programs in Vietnam, for example, and the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program in HCM City (also US) offers first class graduate economics and public policy training. “Before signing up for a joint program,” she recommends, “a student ought to use the Internet to learn more about the foreign partner school.”

Tran Thi Ha, Director of the University Education Department at MOET, agrees that Vietnamese universities, especially leading ones, ought to be “choosy” in establishing partnerships. They ought to focus on the education quality.

However, concludes Tuoi Tre, it seems that the trend is just the opposite: universities in Vietnam are so keen to set up joint training programmes that they are not careful in choosing partners.

Source: Tuoi tre