Photo courtesy of Robert Nicholas
From WIRE REPORTS
Anxiety and tension loomed large on millions of faces in
Viet Nam as hundreds of thousands of students sat for the university entrance
examinations last week.
However, Hoang Nhu Lam, a wealthy businessman in Sai Gon
whose daughter is also attending college this year, was unperturbed by all the
fuss.
Last Sunday, his daughter left for the United States to
study at a university in Boston. Lam said he would have to spend about $30,000
annually to fund her six-year study to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
“It will cost my family dearly, but I think it is worth
it,” Lam told Vietweek. “She
just cannot study here in Viet Nam,” he said, adding he has started to prepare
to send his 10-year-old son to study abroad as well.
A rising number of the nouveau riche, as well as some
middle- and upper-income middle-class families in Viet Nam ― where the annual
income per capita is around $1,400 ― are opting to send their children abroad
for higher studies.
Experts say they are “escaping” an education system that is
rigid, of suspect quality and riddled with scandals in recent years.
In 2010, Transparency International’s Global Corruption
Barometer for Viet Nam found that education was perceived as the second most-corrupt
sector.
In the latest case offering evidence that cheating happens
at every level of examinations in Viet Nam, six teachers and staff members of a
private school in the northern province of Bac Giang were fired after videos
posted on the Internet showed the use of cheat sheets with proctors’ help
during the national high school graduation exam that wrapped up on June 4. A
student had recorded the proceedings with a camera pen.
“How can I stop worrying if my kids study in such an
environment?” asked Lam, who runs a ceramics business in the southern province
of Binh Duong.
In disarray
Last May, major newspapers carried photographs of hundreds
of parents shoving and jostling each other and pushing over an iron gate at a
primary school in Ha Noi just to get an application form.
The Thuc Nghiem Primary School had 200-some openings and at
least 600 hopefuls. Admission in the school is coveted by parents because it
adopts “American-style learning” instead of the traditional knowledge-cramming
method and rote learning Vietnamese schools typically offer.
A WikiLeaks cable on Vietnamese education, sent from the U.S.
embassy in January 2010, said: “…The Vietnamese educational system is widely
regarded as being in crisis at all levels… Teaching methods remain too passive,
with students having little chance to interact with the teacher, discuss
issues, or ask questions.”
In such a situation, many better-off parents have jumped on
the bandwagon of sending children to international-style private schools, and
later, to colleges and universities overseas.
More than 30,000 Vietnamese were studying at foreign higher
learning institutions last year, the
Associated Press said in a recent report. Viet Nam ranks fifth-highest
worldwide for its student enrollments in Australia, and eighth for enrollments
in the U.S., placing it above Mexico, Brazil and France, the AP added.
An estimated 15,000 Vietnamese students were studying in
the U.S. last year. Viet Nam was among a few countries that recorded a surging
number of students in the U.S. with an increase of 14 percent from the previous
year, according to the Open Doors 2011 report commissioned by the New
York-based Institute of International Education.
But the craze for “international” education has not
translated into quality schools springing up in the country, experts said.
“Not much good at all,” said Dennis Berg, who has worked as
an educational consultant in Viet Nam in the past 20 years. “If there are
standards and there is some system of monitoring and certification then the
international system might be a valued part of the educational system.”
“But until something is done, it is just a bunch of greedy
people making money… selling education as a commodity.”
Colonial neglect
A 2008 report prepared by the Harvard University’s Kennedy
School said many problems facing Viet Nam’s higher education were a consequence
of the country’s “tragic modern history.”
“The French colonial regime that ruled Viet Nam from the
latter half of the 19th century until 1945 invested very little in tertiary
education, even in comparison with other colonial powers,” the report said.
“As a result, Vietnam missed the wave of institutional
innovation in higher education that swept across much of Asia during the early
20th century, when many the region’s leading institutions of higher learning
were established.”
The report said Vietnamese universities were churning out
an educated workforce that fell short of its economic and societal demand.
Foreign companies have lamented that the poor quality of universities will
hinder Viet Nam’s economic growth and made it difficult for them to find enough
graduates in finance, management and information technology.
For instance, according to the Harvard report, Intel (the
world’s largest computer chipmaker) has struggled to hire qualified engineers
for its manufacturing facility in Sai Gon. The report’s authors said this was
“the worst result” Intel has encountered in any country they have invested in.
But there has been some headway made.
Nguyen Kim Dung, deputy director of the Institute for
Educational Research, a think tank at the Sai Gon University of Education, said
private small- and medium-sized enterprises have started to complain less about
the quality of undergraduates turned out by Vietnamese universities.
“These colleges have tried their best to tailor their
curriculums to the needs of society,” said Dung, who has researched extensively
on higher education in Viet Nam.
The National Assembly, Viet Nam’s legislature, last month
passed a law that would give more autonomy to universities. Schools would then
be able to determine their enrollment quotas, design their own curriculums, or
increase remuneration for instructors.
No looking back
The education ministry estimates that up to 70 percent of
overseas students choose to stay in foreign countries after graduation to
further their study or find jobs there.
“Graduates returning from overseas with new degrees often
find themselves discouraged or prohibited from introducing new practices in the
institutions to which they return,” said Lisa Drummond, a Viet Nam analyst at
the York University in Canada.
Well-known Vietnamese astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan, who
has won international awards for popularizing his discipline, said not having a
conducive environment to do research is one of the main reasons that prevents
Vietnamese-born scientists who are trained abroad from coming back and working
at home.
There “must also be good material conditions for the
scientist,” Thuan said in a 2009 interview.
Vietnamese scientists and researchers get basic salaries of
between $144 and $240 a month at national-level institutes.
Lam, the businessman whose daughter is attending college is
Boston, said he would also encourage his daughter to find a job in the U.S.
after graduation.
“I’ll do my best to help her achieve that goal, even at the
expense of selling my house.”
