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For Associate Professor Tran Hoang Linh, teaching is fun but a
busy lecturing schedule keeps him away from his true love, research.
 | | Students at HCM
City’s University of Natural Sciences take part in an experiment. Lack of
funding and complicated administrative procedures are discouraging university
staff from conducting research, expert says. (Photo: VNS) | “I can
only conduct research in the evening at home,” said the deputy head of Ha Noi
University of Technology’ Electricity Department. Linh has
to teach full time almost every day because his department is severely short
staffed. He is
not the only university lecturer in Viet Nam who misses his research. Only 6.5
per cent of his colleagues at provincial universities and 15 per cent of
lecturers at national technology universities are involved in university-level
academic research, according to a recent report by the Ministry of Education and
Training’s (MoET) Science and Technology Department. Research
is apparently now an Achilles’ heel for many of Viet Nam’s universities, a
challenge that the country needs to tackle to achieve its goal of bringing its
universities up to international standards. MoET’s
report, conducted across 34 Vietnamese universities, indicated that technology
universities had the highest percentage of lecturers involved in academic
research - 4.8 per cent at a national-level and 12 per cent at a ministry-level.
The figures were far smaller at provincial universities - just 0.5 per cent and
1.2 per cent, respectively. The
ministry report suggested a poor standard of university research that was
preventing Viet Nam from fulfilling its target of breaking into the world’s top
200 universities by 2020. In many
countries, including those at the forefront of education such as the United
States and Britain, research is one of the key elements of a university.
Professor Frank Webster, head of the City University London’s Sociology
Department, said in his department, which was fairly typical of sociology
departments in universities across the UK, staff spent an equal amount of time
on teaching and research.
Broadly
speaking, he said that 30 per cent of their time was spent on lectures and
classes, 30 per cent on research and writing, and 30 per cent on administrative
roles and office work. “As a
department head, I have little time for research. I try to keep abreast of my
subject, but have little time to write, a loss I feel badly,” said Webster.
“Mostly at weekends, it’s research I do if at all possible.”
Professor Thom Hudson from the Department of Second Language Studies at the
University of Hawaii, also said it was very important for university lecturers
to spend a sufficient amount of time on research.
“Research is very important at the University of Hawaii for promotion and
tenure. I would estimate that about half of one’s time is concerned with
research and writing,” he said.
In Viet
Nam, however, not that many university lecturers have such a passion for
research. Doctor
Le Thi Hanh from the Education Management Institute said many Vietnamese
university lecturers underestimated the role of research. Doctor
Tran Hoang Hao from HCM City’s National University said most research projects
were conducted by prestigious scientists.
According to Professor Dao Trong Thi, chair of the National Assembly’s Committee
for Culture, Education and Youth, low research budgets and complicated
procedures were among the factors discouraging university staff from conducting
research.
MoET’s
report showed that 248 research projects at a country-level were carried out
between 2006 and 2009 with a total budget of VND136 billion (US$6.8 million), or
roughly $27,400 for each project. About
5,500 university-level projects were reported during the same period, with a
budget of VND53 billion ($2.65 million), or $480 per project. That’s
why the major source of income for most university staff in Viet Nam comes from
lecturing. Some of
them were doing two or three times as many lectures than the required amount,
which was already very high compared to other countries, said Nguyen Quoc Vong,
a lecturer from the Ha Noi Agriculture University. The high
ratio of university staff to students in Viet Nam (1:30) also made it difficult
for them to find time for research, he said. Doctor
Nguyen Thi Canh from HCM City’s National University said many research projects
were impractical.
Professor Dao Trong Thi said the poor research record of Viet Nam’s universities
could not improve unless there was a change in the methods of management and the
way educators thought.
“To
inspire university staff to conduct research, a massive budget isn’t necessary,
but a good way of using that budget is,” he said. He said
the importance of a project should be taken into consideration before a budget
was allocated. “To
inspire university lecturers, we need to wake up the passion inside them by
managing and judging their research in a fair way,” he said. Making
research part of the criteria to classify university staff - such as for pay
rises and higher academic titles - would also be a good way of improving the
standard of research, he said. “In my
opinion, we need to manage in a way that encourages lecturers to move forward
with their careers, and to move forward, they will need to have qualified
research,” said Thi. The
current performance assessment, which was based on class hours, undoubtedly led
to the fact that university staff preferred teaching, he concluded.
VietNamNet/Viet
Nam News | 
