MOET's director of High Education Department Nguyen Thi Kim Phung

The suggestions were made after a Vietnamese-American professor was rejected as a university rector because he did not meet regulations.

Professor Truong Nguyen Thanh, called ‘the professor in shorts’, because he once turned up in a T-shirt and shorts to give a lecture to students, left Hoa Sen University after the rejection.

“It’s a pity that talented professors don’t stay in Vietnam,” said Pham Tat Dong, secretary general of the Vietnam Society for Study Encouragement. “One professor cannot create the entire education system, but he could have made great contributions to Vietnam’s education.”

If Vietnam wants to attract talents, it needs to apply policies to encourage talents to come to Vietnam, not to create rigid policies which block their way to Vietnam.

Pham Hiep, a renowned education researcher, said that Vietnam’s 2012 Higher Education Law is out of date and lags behind the times. 

The current laws stipulate that candidates for the post of rector of a university, besides deep professional knowledge, must have at least five years of managerial experience.

“The provision of the law is too rigid. There is no research or evidence proving that one can undertake the tasks of a rector well with five years of experience in management,” Hiep commented.

“Everyone understands that the most important virtues of a rector are management capability and academic credibility,” he said.

There is no need for the watchdog agency and local authorities to intervene in the school’s business, especially when Hoa Sen is a private university, which doesn’t use the state’s money.

"With current law, even a Harvard professor is not qualified to be the rector of a Vietnamese university," Hiep said.

Nguyen Thi Kim Phung, director of the Ministry of Education and Training’s Higher Education Department, said the laws must be observed. 

“The case of Prof Thanh must not be the reason for us to conclude that the state is not succeeding with its policy on attracting talented people,” she said. 

However, she agrees that, in this case, relevant parties did not deal with the problem in a flexible way.

“If Hoa Sen University had high determination, it would still have found a way to reach its goal without breaking the law,” she said in Tien Phong.

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