VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has turned the green light on, allowing universities to enroll students in their own ways, instead of following the ministry’s plan. However, schools still keep hesitant about this.

MOET has unexpectedly announced the application of the new university enrolment mechanism to be applied from 2014.

Schools would be able to apply one of the three solutions to find students, either organizing university entrance exams themselves, admitting students twice a year; cooperating with other schools to enroll students; or letting students attend the national entrance exams to be organized by MOET.

Deputy Minister of MOET Bui Van Ga said to date, 17 universities and junior colleges have submitted their enrolment plans to MOET. All of them are private schools.

Ga noted that state owned schools do not plan to look for students, because they don’t worry about the lack of students to enroll. State owned schools are always the top choice for students.

Meanwhile, if the schools organize exams themselves to select students, they would face high risks in exam questions.

Therefore, they would rather select students through the national university exams to be organized by MOET, the way schools have been following so far.

Head of the Banking Academy’s Training Division Tran Manh Dung, while applauding the MOET’s decision on giving schools the right to take initiative in their enrolment work, said that in the immediate time, there would be no changes with the enrolment mechanism of the school, because the currently applied method still can meet the school’s requirements.

Dung thinks that the ministry’s decision mostly aims at helping private schools easily find learners after the schools kept complaining about the lack of students.

However, Dung said, both private schools and students need to think carefully when applying the enrolment plan of their own. Students may feel “isolated,” because their exam results would not be recognized by other schools.

Vice President of the Hanoi University of Business and Technology Vu Van Hoa, while noting that most of the schools wanting to enroll students with their private plans are the ones which find it hard to enroll students, said his school would set up a specific enrolment plan as soon as possible.

Hoa has also warned that it would be a burden for private schools to organize exams themselves, because it would very costly and risky.

Le Trong Thang, Head of the Training Division of the Hanoi Mining and Geology University, has expressed his worry that problems would arise when schools are given the right to organize exams, i.e. the right to set exam questions.

“Schools would set the floor marks, or the minimum exam marks students must have to be able to enroll in schools, depending on the difficulty of the exam questions,” Thang said.

“MOET will only be able to prevent the problems if schools are not allowed to set exam questions themselves,” he added.

Some schools said they are planning to follow their specific ways in enrolling students. However, there would be no changes in the enrolment mechanism in the immediate time.

Deputy Director of the Post and Telecommunication Institute Le Huu Lap said a new enrolment mechanism may be applied from 2017 and that it would be applied after students and parents are well informed about it.

Van Chung