VietNamNet Bridge – Under a new regulation that allows students to apply at up to nine schools, educators fear the enrolment figures could cause confusion for administrators.

The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) is drafting a new enrolment mechanism, expected to be applied from 2015.

Under the draft, every high school graduate would be allowed to register at nine schools. Twenty days after MOET makes public the results of high school finals, students can begin registrations and pay enrolment fees to universities and junior colleges.

Under the draft, schools would be allowed to organize enrolment campaigns every year. The deadline for university enrolment is October 15 and for junior colleges October 31.

Earlier, a representative of MOET had said that students could register at no more than six schools.

After selecting students for the first round, schools will have to print advice notes and provide to students who have turned down for admission.

The advice notes will be used by students to enroll in other schools. Every student will receive three notes.

As such, MOET still has to make a final decision about how many registrations every student can make, six or nine.

However, an analyst warned that no matter which of the two solutions is chosen, this will lead to a high numbers of “virtual students”, i.e., students who register to study at some schools, but may finally not study at the schools even if they are admitted, because they would choose more prestigious schools.

An enrolment officer at the Hanoi National University said the new regulation would be a “danger” to schools, because they cannot be sure about the numbers of students they can find.

“If a student registers to sit five tests in math, physics, chemistry, literature and English for the high school finals, he would have many choices for university study,” he explained.

“I think that many students would make 4-5 or more registrations to different schools. It is really worrying,” he added.

Associate Professor Le Huu Lap from the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology said that schools had suffered heavily from “virtual students” in the past, when a student could register to sit the university entrance exams in two exam groups (each exam group comprises three fixed subjects).

If the tentative regulation is applied, the “virtual student” problem would become even more serious.

“Big difficulties will occur for universities,” he said. “Schools will not have reliable figures about the actual demand to program their enrolment plans.”

Dr. Tran Dinh Ly, head of the Training Division of the HCM City Agriculture & Forestry University, noted that middle- and low-ranked schools would suffer the most from the new regulation.

He went on to say that it was very difficult to be certain about the number of potential students, because one student may be admitted to many different schools.

NLD