Hiep Pham20 July 2013 Issue No:281
In a landmark decision that overrides previous massification policies, Vietnam is to slow the expansion of higher education between now and at least 2020, according to a new universities and colleges planning document signed by Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan.
The planning regulation called “Decision 37”, released last month under the framework of the higher education law that came into effect in January 2013, sets new targets: by 2020, Vietnam will have some 2.2 million students in higher education, 3% of them from overseas, and the number of students will represent 2.56% of the population.
This means there will be almost no increase in student numbers in higher education between now and the end of the decade, as the number of students stood at 2.16 million in 2010 – or 250 per 10,000 people (2.5% of the population).
The previous targets were set at 4.5 million students in higher education by 2020 – or 450 per 10,000 people (4.5%) under a 2007 regulation known as “Decision 121”.
It is not clear whether the new targets mean that government is acknowledging the failure of previous targets under Decision 121 or are due to a “mis-estimate by policy-makers”, according to a Hanoi-based educator who did not want to be named.
The educator also questioned whether the lowering of targets was reasonable given a high birth rate in the past decade.
However, graduate unemployment and the phenomenon of graduates taking up jobs that do not need university education have been rising, with some critics blaming the over-expansion of universities.
By last October, Vietnam already had 165,000 unemployed graduates, or some 17% of the overall jobless total. Criticism that graduates lack the skills needed by employers is also increasingly heard.
Nghia Tran, a PhD student in higher education studies at the University of Melbourne, described Decision 37 as a “turning point” for higher education policy. The previous targets under Decision 121 were “legal excuses” for the over-expansion of higher education in the past decade, he told University World News.
He said that with lower student quotas for both existing and newly established institutions, “universities will have to compete really hard against each other to maintain their operations, if they do not want to be eliminated”.
The government has been attempting to slow higher education expansion for some time. At a higher education summit in January, attended by rectors of all higher education institutions and provincial heads of education from around the country, the Ministry of Education and Training admitted that quality was not increasing at the same pace as student numbers.
“The first priority for our sector in 2013 is to improve quality assurance in every aspect of higher education,” the ministry’s Director of Higher Education Bui Anh Tuan told the summit.
In March, the ministry announced that it would slash enrolment quotas at some 23 higher education institutions due to poor facilities and lack of qualified academics.
The planning regulation called “Decision 37”, released last month under the framework of the higher education law that came into effect in January 2013, sets new targets: by 2020, Vietnam will have some 2.2 million students in higher education, 3% of them from overseas, and the number of students will represent 2.56% of the population.
This means there will be almost no increase in student numbers in higher education between now and the end of the decade, as the number of students stood at 2.16 million in 2010 – or 250 per 10,000 people (2.5% of the population).
The previous targets were set at 4.5 million students in higher education by 2020 – or 450 per 10,000 people (4.5%) under a 2007 regulation known as “Decision 121”.
It is not clear whether the new targets mean that government is acknowledging the failure of previous targets under Decision 121 or are due to a “mis-estimate by policy-makers”, according to a Hanoi-based educator who did not want to be named.
The educator also questioned whether the lowering of targets was reasonable given a high birth rate in the past decade.
However, graduate unemployment and the phenomenon of graduates taking up jobs that do not need university education have been rising, with some critics blaming the over-expansion of universities.
By last October, Vietnam already had 165,000 unemployed graduates, or some 17% of the overall jobless total. Criticism that graduates lack the skills needed by employers is also increasingly heard.
Nghia Tran, a PhD student in higher education studies at the University of Melbourne, described Decision 37 as a “turning point” for higher education policy. The previous targets under Decision 121 were “legal excuses” for the over-expansion of higher education in the past decade, he told University World News.
He said that with lower student quotas for both existing and newly established institutions, “universities will have to compete really hard against each other to maintain their operations, if they do not want to be eliminated”.
The government has been attempting to slow higher education expansion for some time. At a higher education summit in January, attended by rectors of all higher education institutions and provincial heads of education from around the country, the Ministry of Education and Training admitted that quality was not increasing at the same pace as student numbers.
“The first priority for our sector in 2013 is to improve quality assurance in every aspect of higher education,” the ministry’s Director of Higher Education Bui Anh Tuan told the summit.
In March, the ministry announced that it would slash enrolment quotas at some 23 higher education institutions due to poor facilities and lack of qualified academics.
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