VIETNAM-EDUCATION: System Struggles in Post Soviet Era

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Serguei Blagov

HANOI, Nov 4 1996 (IPS) - A shortage of teachers and facilities and even natural disasters, are having a severe impact on Vietnam’s education system, particularly in the post Cold War era when scholarships to the former Soviet Union have all but dried up.

Education opportunities in Communist-ruled Vietnam diminished considerably after the collapse of the former Soviet Union whose state-run universities paid host to many students from countries with the same ideological bent.

Academics say the Vietnamese authorities have been slow to fill the gap at a time when the thirst for higher education has increased due to the new competitive environment that has come with the country’s market reforms.

Students and even working people, are particularly keen to further their studies in economics and business-related courses as well as in language training.

But parents are finding it difficult to secure basic education for their children as the cash-strapped government struggles to find alternative sources of funds for the education system.

“Vietnam’s education system is experiencing a quantitative stagnation and qualitative decline,” admitted Minister of Education Tran Hong Quan during an address to the National Assembly last month.

That admission came as deputies considered the draft of a new education law that includes tax incentives for donors to the education system and introduces special education tax, which is supposed to be paid by all the companies operating in Vietnam.

In 1996, the government allotted 7,120 trillion dongs (around 650 million dollars) to the education ministry — six per cent more than in 1995.

But the ministry recorded a 12 per cent increase of the number of students enrolled. This factor, in addition to rising inflation meant that in real terms, actual per student spending dropped by 20 per cent.

According to ministry of education, there are 10.7 million pupils in primary schools, 5.8 million in secondary schools, and about 500,000 students at high schools and universities.

They are enrolled at 14,000 schools, many of which are forced to adopt a shift system because there are not enough classrooms to accommodate the students.

Then there is the problem of a shortage of teachers, many of whom have given up their low-paying jobs — they earn 20 to 30 dollars a month — to work as secretaries and even hotel receptionists in the private sector.

As a result, during the 1995-96 academic year, the ministry of education said it was short of 58,000 teachers in primary schools and 48,000 at the secondary level.

Many parents have complained that a number of teachers no longer teach basic lessons during regular school hours, but insist that student come back for after-hours — tutoring for which the pupils are charged extra fees.

Natural disasters too have hobbled the system.

Last month, Vietnam’s education ministry sought an additional for 8.5 billion dongs (about 7.7 million dollars) as an emergency fund to repair schools damaged by typhoons and floods.

In 15 northern provinces, a total of 1,270 classrooms were totally destroyed and another 1,437 were left roofless by annual flood rains and typhoons. The ministry was given the money — but it will come out of the 1997 budget.

The legacy of Soviet assistance has resulted in other less obvious cracks in the education system. Soviet support went mainly to the science and engineering-related fields, ignoring subjects like the social sciences, business administration and foreign languages which are now in big demand.

Experts argue that the poor state of the country’s higher education system threatens its ability to cope with regional integration, especially since it lags so far behind in the technological sphere.

“We face problems as basic as shortages of books and lack of laboratory facilities,” says Dr. Hoang Xuan Sinh, president of the privately run Thang Long University in Hanoi. “All these factors have contributed to a crisis in education. As a result, our academic standards are far behind those of other countries.”

But while experts discuss trends in higher education, especially the impact of technology on the way students will learn in the future, in university classrooms across Vietnam the needs are more basic.

According to official statistics, about 87 per cent of university lecturers have a basic degree. As few as half teach subjects that are completely within their area of expertise, with many teaching in subjects in which they are not trained at all.

The quality of education is far below the demands of our human resources development strategy, lamented Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet when addressing Vietnam’s parliament in mid-October.