VietNamNet Bridge - Universities are focusing on enrolling students in majors which are easy to teach and learn and do not require high investments in facilities and laboratories.


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Education experts said they see problems in the structure and scale of majors. Most schools have become multidisciplinary, and therefore, are compared to ‘supermarkets’ where there are only ‘salable goods’.

According to the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), the majors related to business and management are favored most by schools. There are 403 such majors. 

Less favorite are education & training (363), humanity (280), technology (232), computing & information technology (150). Meanwhile, there are only 116 majors related to agriculture, forestry and aquaculture, 47 production & processing, social services (16) and transport services (12).

About 133 schools provide training in management and business, 116 schools have computing and information technology faculties, and 85 schools are polytechnic institutions.  

Universities are focusing on enrolling students in majors which are easy to teach and learn and do not require high investments in facilities and laboratories.

Only 30 schools provide training in natural sciences, 39 schools in life sciences, 46 in social sciences, and 34 in agriculture, forestry & aquaculture. Only 17 schools provide training in law.

As for junior colleges (3 year training), 249 schools provide training in hot majors such as management & business and 208 train in computing and information technology.


An expert said that it is now easy to enroll students in training majors while the costs are lower than other majors.

A report from the National Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education, the Youth and Children showed that training establishments don’t conduct thorough surveys on training demand and don’t provide training services based on information about the labor market.

In other words, schools ‘provide what they have, not what society needs’.

MOET has issued warnings about the excessive supply of graduates in finance and business administration sectors. However, schools still rush to enroll students for the majors.

Business-related training majors organized at junior colleges account for 21.5 percent of the total number of training majors.

No motivation for schools to improve training quality

Prof Nguyen Thien Tong commented that Vietnam’s university education is weak at organization. There are schools called ‘universities’ though they have small scale equal to one faculty only.

“I think it would be better to merge many private and small schools into one academy for easier management,” he said.

“There are many privately run schools set up by investors with powerful financial capability, but limited organization capability,” he said.

Meanwhile, Dam Quang Minh, former rector of FPT University, commented that while the number of students has been increasing rapidly, the lecturer staff has not increased proportionally. As a result, universities are facing a serious shortage of lecturers.


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