VietNamNet Bridge - Students only need a 3 score on one entrance exam subject to be admitted to pedagogy training schools, while university lecturers at the schools rarely conduct research. Such is the state of teacher training in the country. 

But the number of PhDs in Vietnam is still five times than that in Japan.

A report released by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) on August 11 said that Vietnam had 73,000 university lecturers in the 2016-2017 academic year, an increase of 4.6 percent over the year before. This includes 17,000 lecturers with doctorates and 43,000 with master’s degrees.

There are 3,388 lecturers at pedagogical junior colleges (3-year training), including 115 lecturers with doctorate and 2,187 with master’s degrees.

Nguyen Thi Kim Phung, director of the University Education Department, said the number of lecturers with professorship titles and doctorates at pedagogical junior colleges remains low, accounting for 3.4 percent.

There are 3,388 lecturers at pedagogical junior colleges (3-year training), including 115 lecturers with doctorate and 2,187 with master’s degrees.

Phung said the quality of the lecturing staff remains questionable as many lecturers don’t carry out scientific research and don’t have articles published in science journals, while their foreign language skills are limited.

Students just need to have a 10 score from the national high school finals to be able to enroll in pedagogy schools. 

While medical schools set sky-high minimum scores this year because of easy exam questions, pedagogical schools required surprisingly low scores to attract more students.

The low required minimum scores show the students’ lack of interest in pedagogical schools,

Dao Tuan Dat, lecturer at Hanoi University of Science & Technology, warned that the students who got less than a 15 scores will have difficulties studying.

Tran Xuan Nhi, former Deputy Minister of Education and Training, said he fears that future teachers would have low qualification as the student quality is too low.

“It is estimated that a teacher will work for 35 years. I dare not imagine how the consequences would be serious if 35 generations of students are trained by bad teachers,” he said.

Vietnam still has a high number of PhDs. According to the National Bureau of Science and Technology Information, Vietnam has 24,000 PhDs. Nguyen Khac Hung, former senior officer of the National Academy of Public Administration, said the number of PhDs in Vietnam is five times higher than that in Japan.

However, no Vietnamese university is listed among the world’s 500 leading universities.

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