VietNamNet Bridge – Tens of billions of dong have been spent by schools, tens of groups of consultants have been sent to provinces and cities in an effort to attract more students.

Big budgets for marketing

Universities, junior colleges and vocational schools have been gearing up for the enrolment season. It’s now the time for high school students decide which studies and which schools they would follow after finishing schools.

Le Lam, MA, Headmaster of the Dai Viet Vocational School in HCM City, which was established five years ago, said the school spends seven million dong a year on marketing campaigns every enrolment season.

Lam said the school has sent seven groups of consultants to the high schools in the provinces in the central and southern regions, which would clarify the information about the school’s enrolment policy and seek suitable students for the school.

The consultants would organize meetings with students; deliver leaflets and brochures to introduce about the school. Besides, it plans to give thousands helmets as gifts to the teachers and students of the high schools it comes to.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Quoc Anh from Hutech, a technology school, said the school has decided a budget of VND1 billion for the marketing campaigns. Three groups of enrolment consultants have been set up which began working in mid-January and would finish in late March.

Other people-founded schools namely Nguyen Tat Thanh University, Hong Bang University, PSB International College, Gia Dinh Information Technology University, Dong Nai University of Technology have also reported that they would budget one billion dong for the enrolment season.

What do consultants do?

The common target of all the groups of consultants is to lure more students to their schools.

This is really a hard job. A consultant said that in general, when she has only 10 minutes to meet with students. Therefore, there is no time to ask students about their needs and aspirations. Ten minutes would be just enough to give some basic information about the schools and deliver leaflets to students.

“You should speak very quickly and loudly, because you don’t have much time,” she said.

“The most important thing you should do is to make students remember the names of your school. Meanwhile, the information about the tuitions and the training majors can also be found on leaflets,” she added.

The consultant revealed that in order to have the 10-minute meetings with students, she always has to pay money to the school’s board of management or teachers.

Some schools decided to organize “open days,” inviting high school students to go to their schools to see with their eyes the classrooms, material facilities and laboratories.

A Hutech’s representative said the school has been organizing the event over the last six years. The “open day” alone would cost some VND500 million.

The Dong Nai Technology College has also informed that “open days” would be organized every Saturday and Sunday, when high school students would be invited to the school.

A report said that though spending billions of dong on marketing campaigns every year, a lot of schools still cannot find enough students.

Lam from Dai Viet School in HCM City said he has sent consultant groups to 1,000 high schools. “I would be happy if one student from every school we come to would enroll in our school,” he said.

Tien Phong