VietNamNet Bridge – Private universities have mushroomed in recent years, while the number of university lecturers has increased moderately.
Professor Tran Phuong, President of the Hanoi Business and Technology University, said at a recent conference reviewing the 20-year development of non-state owned schools that universities and junior colleges should not be set up in provinces, because the schools cannot attract lecturers.
According to the professor, most of the scientists with bachelor, master degrees or doctorates live in Hanoi (40 percent) and HCM City (25 percent). Only few qualified university lecturers live in other small cities and provinces. How can the local universities hire enough lecturers, then?
Since a lot of schools cannot hire permanent lecturers, they cannot provide high training quality, which results in the fact that they cannot attract students.
Also according to Phuong, the president of a university in Nam Dinh province himself came to Hanoi to meet Phuong and asked Phuong to “lend” some lecturers.
“I accepted to lend some lecturers and deans, but just for the university to “fool” the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET),” he said.
“MOET would allow opening new schools or training majors if it sees the deans of the faculties having doctorates,” he added. “However, the lecturers with doctorates have to spend all of their time on the teaching hours in Hanoi. How can they arrange time to go to Nam Dinh to give lectures?”
Not only private schools, which are believed to less prestigious to attract students and lecturers, state owned schools also keep complaining about the lack of lecturers.
The president of a state owned university noted that the current complicated recruitment procedures and the modest pay both keep masters and PhDs away.
He said that most young people with high qualifications would rather work for businesses to have high incomes than working as university lecturers, to feel restricted and get modest salaries.
The president said that the average income of a university lecturer is just VND4 million, just a little higher than the income of a garment worker, which explains why a lot of excellent university graduates refuse to stay at schools after the graduation and continue their studies to become lecturers.
Education experts have pointed out that the poor teaching staff is foreseeable as the number of newly set up schools has been increasing rapidly, while the number of lecturers has not been increasing at the same rate.
Professor Ngo The Chi, Director of the Finance Institute, one of the biggest and most prestigious universities in Vietnam, also complained that he cannot find enough lecturers for the school. In general, the institute needs 30-40 new lecturers every year.
Chi said the finance institute tries to attract the lecturers with MA degrees or higher from other schools, or seek potential lecturers among the excellent new university graduates.
“We have to recruit new graduates as well and train them to become lecturers. If not, we cannot find enough for our teaching staff,” he explained.
In order to attract young lecturers, the school has offered a lot of preferences. Their tuitions for training courses for master and doctor degrees would be 50-100 percent paid by the school.
Thanh Mai
Đăng ký: VietNam News
