The decision by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) to increase the “quota” for university education by 6.5 percent compared to the last academic year has surprised many people. Prior to that, the National Assembly decided that higher quotas will not be given to the universities which have not improved the training conditions since last year.

Inconsistent policies?

Before officially deciding the enrolment quotas for the new academic year, MOET requested universities, academies and junior colleges to submit reports about the implementation of the plans to improve the teaching facilities and the quality of teaching staff. The reports must be submitted to the ministry before February 1, 2011. However, even though the schools have not submitted reports, MOET has still released a decision to increase the enrolment quota by 6.5 percent.

The ministry has decided that universities will enroll 514,500 students this academic year, an increase of 33,500 students in comparison with 2010. Explaining the figure, MOET said that the decision has been made after considering the enrolment result in 2010 and the proposals by universities.

Meanwhile, most universities and junior colleges, except the big ones, have proposed to increase the enrolment quotas by 3-5 percent. newly established universities and the universities, which have been upgraded from junior colleges, have asked for the 7-10 percent quota increases.

Deputy Minister of MOET Bui Van Ga said that more quotas had been allocated to the schools which have employed more lecturers and invested to upgrade their teaching facilities (enlarging classrooms and equipping laboratories). Besides, schools also need to expand the training scale to provide work force for key economic zones, to some specific sectors, and to remote and disadvantaged areas.

Meanwhile, the National Assembly’s resolution approved in June 2010, clearly stipulates that higher quotas must not be granted to the schools, if their conditions have not improved since the last year. Especially, the enrolment quotas must be lowered for the schools, established prior to 2010, which still do not have headquarters at the addresses given in the applications for school establishment. After three years since the day of establishment, if the schools still cannot build its headquarters at the registered addresses, the schools should have their licenses revoked.

Statistics show that in the period from 2006 to 2010, the quotas for university education had been increasing steadily by 10 percent year after year. Meanwhile, the number of students finishing high schools did not increase, hovering around 750,000-850,000 students.

Therefore, analysts believe that the increases in the quotas for university education may lead to the education imbalance. The problem has been mentioned by analysts for many years: as Vietnam has been focusing on university education, it has been producing too many engineers, while it lacks skilful workers.

Besides, analysts have also pointed out the imbalance in the training of different majors. While the number of students studying economics-relating majors accounted for 27 percent of total students, some important majors including agriculture, forestry and fisheries could not enroll enough students.

Meanwhile, more quotas have been decided to be granted to economics-relating majors (quotas for them have increased by 70 percent).

According to the targets set by the Government by 2020, economics and law will have 20 percent of total students and natural sciences will have nine percent of students. The current figure for natural sciences is less than three percent.

Source: VnMedia