EDUCATION-VIETNAM: Too-Successful Policy Leads to Brain Drain

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Tran Dinh Thanh Lam

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, Aug 18 2003 (IPS) - Le Thi Xuan has all her plans neatly laid out, now that she has been admitted to the National University of Singapore (NUS) in September.

But Singapore is just a stopover on Xuan’s path to getting an international college diploma, her real destination being an educational institution in the United States. ”After one or two years at NUS, I could transfer to an American college or university that recognises this institution,” Xuan said.

Like many students here, Xuan wants to go abroad because of the perceived better quality of education overseas, a policy that the state has also encouraged for more than a decade now.

But this policy may have been too successful: Officials are worried that too many Vietnamese students are staying on abroad after their studies, a brain drain whose impact on the country may show soon.

Whether Xuan returns to Vietnam after her overseas studies, for instance, is a question mark at this point.

Then there are those like Bui Hai Hung, who earned his doctorate in Australia and is working as a lecturer at a university there for years while continuing his research. He says that he would return to Vietnam, but refuses to set a concrete date or year. ”Some day,” he said.

”The opportunity of studying overseas is now open for everybody,” remarked Prof Pham Sy Tien, head of the Managing Board of Overseas Training under the education ministry.

”It’s good news,” Dr Nguyen Ngoc Giao of Ho Chi Minh City National University said of the fact that more and more Vietnamese are getting higher studies at institutions overseas. But ”we don’t know how many of these students will come back home after their graduation”, he said in an interview.

Many students decide to stay in the host countries, lured by higher incomes and the chance to make good elsewhere.

Over the last decade, more than 15,000 Vietnamese students have been sent by their parents to get an education abroad, majority of them studying business administration, information technology, tourism and foreign languages.

By 2005, the figure of self-funded overseas students may rise to 20,000, according to the Ministry of Education and Training.

In truth, the ministry does not know exactly how many of the students who went overseas have returned home, Deputy Minister Tran Van Nhung admitted.

”Most of them would prefer to work in their country, but they can’t ignore the lucrative options available abroad,” Giao said.

The fact that Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are increasingly adopting more flexible policies to attract students from Vietnam have been a boon for those like Xuan.

After all, she had to make a ‘detour’ in her educational plans through Singapore, since she had failed to get a education visa for the United States.

The interviewer at the U.S. Consulate here feared that she would stay on in the country illegally since Xuan had relatives living there and doubted her family’s ability to fund her studies. ”One or two years at NUS will spare me all these troubles,” explained Xuan.

To get overseas students, other Asian countries are not as rigid as the U.S. government in their requirements – Xuan did not have to prove her family’s financial capacity or promise to return to Vietnam when she graduates.

All she had to do was to prove that she was a very good student and had 10,000 U.S. dollars in her bank account.

”You could have the same education quality (as in the U.S.), but at fewer cost,” Xuan said. ”You could also do some part-time jobs to earn extra pocket money.”

The trend is continuing now that many Vietnamese do not need to go the United States or the west to take up their studies, and find going to Asian countries cheaper.

International students in the United States pay from 16,750 to 27,250 U.S. dollars in tuition, boarding and transport per year, compared to an annual package of 7,500 dollars they pay in Singapore.

In Singapore, too, international students who study well can even get study loans or a full scholarship, and are allowed to stay and work in the city state for three or four years after graduation.

Education experts agree that the root of the problem appears to be the obsolete and backward education system in Vietnam, which is far from enough from what the country needs at a time of robust economic growth.

”We will never have a skilled work force as long as our universities and colleges are poorly managed and have such poor teaching standards,” said Giao.

Vietnamese educators say that while the number of graduates stayinng overseas is likely to be still small compared to the outflows from India and China in the 1990s, it would become a brain drain if the trend continues indefinitely. ”The Vietnamese work force could suffer a crippling blow,” one educator said.

”We must find new ways to ensure that overseas students will return home after graduation,” said Tien.

One of these ways is the state’s offer of scholarships to science and technology experts to polish their doctorates overseas, then return to the country.

Each year, the education ministry offers scholarships of 100 billion Vietnamese dong (64.5 million dollars) to young experts and technicians so that they can get further training abroad. Since April 2000, some 1,704 people have benefited from this scheme, Tien said.

Tran Van Thuyen is one of the 453 students that received the scholarship this year. ”I decided to choose networking as the sector is rather new in Vietnam,” Thuyen said. An information technology graduate, he has just passed an exam that entitles him to state-funded overseas training.

The education ministry is carrying out two other programmes funded by Russia and the United States. Each year, 200 college graduates are sent to Russia. A hundred are sent to the United States under a project carried out through the Vietnam Education Fund.

Good students who canot afford to study in foreign countries can take part in ‘remote campus learning’ programmes, which allow students to stay in Vietnam and follow the programmes of the foreign schools they select. Foreign lecturers are invited to teach in Vietnam during the course, and students need study abroad only during the final academic year.

”The four-month term in the United States was really useful because it was a great opportunity for us to have direct contact with the MBA program there,” gushed Vu Quang Thinh, who followed the MBA course in the National Economics University in cooperation with Washington State University.

Asked if he had ever thought of staying on in the United States afterwards, Thinh said: ”All these things are only meaningful if I stay in Vietnam.”