VietNamNet Bridge - On internet education forums, Vietnamese students call themselves ‘bachelor’s degree collectors’ because one student may have several degrees in different majors.

Le Dung, the director of an import/export company in Hanoi, said he was very surprised to receive an ‘application for study’ from a female worker.

He was surprised because the female worker had three bachelor’s degrees as declared on her curriculum vitae. If she can use the knowledge she got from three universities, she would be ‘more than capable’ to hold the post of the company’s general director.

The director said he could not understand why the worker still accepted to spend two more years and big money to obtain the fourth bachelor’s degree. Meanwhile, she wanted to attend a training course in mass media, which has no relation to her current work, an officer in the ‘purchasing’ division.

When Dung asked the worker why she wanted to study mass media, she said she knows it would take time and money to attend the training course, while she may not be able to fulfill her tasks at the company.

“However, she said she still needs to continue studying because this is the way she ‘invests in the future’,” the director said.

“Investing in the future’ as said by the officer, means preparing knowledge for jobs one may undertake in the future.

The officer fears that she may lose her current job in the future. If so, she would have to look for other jobs. She hopes if she has professional knowledge in many different fields, so she would have more job opportunities.
The story, related by Dung, received hundreds of replies from readers after it was posted. 

Thu Lan, 28, from Hanoi, wrote that she was going to go back to school to study accountancy.

“I am a PR officer at a manufacturing company. But I don’t think this job is stable. PR officers would be laid off in economic recession. I decided to obtain a bachelor’s degree in accountancy,” she wrote.

“All businesses need accountants. Accountants will not be jobless,” she explained.

Meanwhile, Dung commented that Vietnamese students think the wrong way. “I would prefer workers with deep knowledge in one major to the ones with general knowledge in many majors,” he said.

A labor expert noted that the high unemployment rate reported by the statistics offices recently worried white collar workers. The reports said that hundreds of thousands of university graduates were jobless. 

Therefore, workers tend to study as much as they can, believing that more bachelor’s degree will give them privileges in the employer's’ eyes.

NLD