VietNamNet Bridge - Ten years ago, experts warned about the oversupply of workers with bachelor’s degrees but their admonitions were ignored. 

Dr Nguyen Van Nha, former head of the Training Division of the Hanoi National University

The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) Circular 32 setting up ceiling for university training scale took effect on February 1, under which one university must not have more than 15,000 full-time students.

An analyst, while applauding the MOET decision to set up limits on schools’ training, said that MOET was a bit late in releasing such a decision. 

According to Dr Nguyen Van Nha, former head of the Training Division of the Hanoi National University, there are 768,000 students who study and conduct scientific research at universities and junior colleges, which means there are 118 students per every 10,000 people, a proportion which is not high compared with that in other regional countries.

However, Nha still thinks it is necessary to control the increase in the number of university students, saying that it is now the right time to pay attention to the training quality and not expand the training scale at any cost.

In the past, Vietnam strived to have 450 students for every 10,000 people to attend university, after officials learned that in other countries the ratio was similar.

Nguyen Minh Thuyet, an expert in education and social issues, in 2004, as Deputy Chair of the National Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Children, warned that it would be a big waste if Vietnam spent too much of its resources on university education.

Recent labor reports all showed the sharp increase in the number of unemployed university graduates, with 26,000 more unemployed university graduates reported within a short time, from the second to the fourth quarter of 2015. Meanwhile, the number of jobless university graduates has reached 225,000.

“If schools don’t reform their training methods and curricula, thousands of university graduates will stay unemployed,” Nha said. 

In the past, Vietnam strived to have 450 students for every 10,000 people to attend university, after officials learned that in other countries the ratio was similar. 

However, analysts have pointed out that it is unreasonable to compare Vietnam with the countries. 

This thinking led to the establishment of a series of universities and junior colleges in the years between 2004 and 2010 which set easy requirements on applicants and produced high numbers of substandard graduates.

According to Nguyen Minh Thuyet, former deputy chair of the National Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education, the Youth and Children, later, the government in the past approved a strategy on human resource development by 2020, which called for 400 (not 450 as initially planned) in every 10,000 attend university.

Two years later, the target was lowered to 256 students per 10,000 people.


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