VietNamNet Bridge - Ten years ago, FPT University had to wait only nine months from the time of the school establishment approval to the opening of the first training course. 

               MOET has proposed removing and simplifying 110 business conditions 

Now it has had to spend three years to follow necessary procedures to open a school branch, according to FPT University president Nguyen Truong Tung. 

The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has proposed removing and simplifying 110 business conditions in the educational sector stipulated in Decree 73 on international cooperation and foreign investment in Vietnam’s education, and Decree 46 on the conditions to operate in the educational sector.

Vu Thi Thu Ha from MOET said at a recent event that of 212 currently valid business conditions, MOET has proposed removing 81 and simplifying 29 others.

MOET, when announcing the plan to remove unnecessary sub-licenses, emphasized that one of the most important goals of reform in the educational sector is laying down an open legal framework for educational establishments to develop.

As such, the total number of business conditions MOET wants to remove or simplify is 110, or 51.9 percent of total conditions.

Many required unreasonable business conditions like ‘investors must have financial capability’, or ‘schools must have enough personal belongings for each child’ and ‘schools must be suitable to the development programs’. These will be eliminated because they place difficulties for investors.

MOET, when announcing the plan to remove unnecessary sub-licenses, emphasized that one of the most important goals of reform in the educational sector is laying down an open legal framework for educational establishments to develop.

Meanwhile, some analysts said that a ‘forest of sub-licenses’ will still exist if MOET eliminates the 51.9 percent of sub-licenses as promised, and that there are still many more business conditions that need to be removed.

Le Truong Tung, president of FPT University, said it is unreasonable to require schools to submit the list and profiles of all teachers when applying for establishment. Since schools still don’t have operation licenses, they cannot sign labor contracts and obtain work permits.

Also according to Tung, schools have to show the profiles of all lecturers when applying to open new majors. 

He said that with the unreasonable regulation, schools have to recruit workers, pay for social insurance policies, and maintain material facilities even though they do not know if they will obtain licenses and when they will get licenses.

In general, enterprises in other business fields can start their business after obtaining operation licenses. But this is not true in the educational sector. 

To put schools into operation, investors still have to file many other applications to get other sub-licenses.

“Schools have to follow specific procedures when opening training majors, when planning the number of students to enroll, designing curricula and issuing degrees,” he said.