By Cameron Huddleston, Kiplinger

Chances are you’re not doing enough to protect your personal information from being stolen. “Everyone puts themselves at risk of hackers on a daily basis,” says Jerry Irvine, chief information officer of Prescient Solutions and a member of the National Cyber Security Partnership Task Force.

Person stealing someone’s identity. (Detroit Free Press/MCT via Getty Images)

Hackers use viruses and spyware to infiltrate computers and mobile devices to steal data, such as passwords, Social Security numbers and account information. They then can use that information to access your accounts and drain them, run up debt under your name or steal your entire identity.

If you think you aren’t at risk of becoming a victim, consider these statistics: Identity theft is so widespread that someone becomes a victim every three seconds, according to a study by Javelin Strategy and Research. Thieves stole more than $21 billion from 12.6 million victims in 2012 by using their personal information. And it can take years for identity theft victims to repair their finances, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

Irvine says that few mobile devices have any type of anti-virus solution. And anti-virus solutions for computers only protect against 30% of known viruses. Now you don’t even have to click on an image or link on a Web site to inadvertently download a virus. By simply hovering over some links and images with your mouse, you can start a script that will gather info from your hard drive.

Although hackers are quite sophisticated when it comes to gaining access to personal data, Irvine says there are several ways you might be making it easier for them to access your information.

Using weak passwords. If you’re using simple passwords for your accounts so you can remember them, you’re making it easy for hackers to figure them out, too. Irvine recommends creating passwords with a minimum of ten characters that include numbers, symbols and upper- and lowercase letters. You can test the security of your passwords at Microsoft.com/security. Don’t store these passwords in a file on your computer or mobile device that hackers could access by using spyware you might inadvertently install by clicking on links in spam e-mails, texts or Web sites. See Fix Your Passwords for tips on creating strong passwords and securely storing them.

Using the same password for more than one account. Plenty of people use a single password for multiple accounts. If a hacker figures it out, suddenly he has access to all of your accounts. Irvine says that, ideally, you should use different passwords for every account. But at least you should use different passwords for your financial accounts than you use for social network accounts.

Using public Wi-Fi. It’s tempting to use free public Wi-Fi to get Internet access while you’re away from home or work. But these shared networks make it easy for hackers to see everything you’re doing. Irvine says. Use your phone’s 3G or 4G service to access the Web for a more secure connection, or tether your computer to your phone to use its data plan rather than public Wi-Fi.

Read the full article HERE.

By Dennis C. McCornac and Anne Cullen, Eurasia Review

One of the more memorable experiences in Vietnam is a visit to Hanoi’s Temple of Literature, especially during graduation season, as newly-minted scholars come to celebrate their achievement. Particularly inspiring is a reading of the lofty goals of the prophetic words of Emperor Dai Bao inscribed on a plaque hanging inside the temple, the first university in Vietnam and for centuries the principal center of learning.

A local commercial bank’s employee counts money. (HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images)

“Virtuous and talented men are state sustaining elements: The strength and the prosperity of a state depend on its vitality and it becomes weaker as such vitality fails. That is why all the Saint Emperors and clear-sighted Kings didn’t fail in seeing to the formation of men of talent and the employment of literati to develop this vitality.” Nien Hieu Dai Bao (1442)

These goals, notwithstanding, the current state of Vietnam’s vocational and higher education sectors leaves much to be desired (Goyette 2012; Hayden, Martin and Khanh, 2010). The educational system can no longer rely on the established learning method of education, which has been the standard for centuries and creates passive learners and “passive recorders” who lack critical thinking skills.

In a comprehensive study of Vietnamese education by the Harvard Kennedy School Vietnam Program (2010), for example, the authors concluded that ”a broad consensus has emerged in Vietnam that higher education is in need of deep and wide-reaching reform. This consensus extends from students and their families to public intellectuals and educators to policymakers at the highest levels of government. Vietnam‘s national competitiveness increasingly depends on skilled human capital, which its higher education system is not delivering.”

Education in every sense is one of the fundamental factors of development (Ozturk, 2001). No country can achieve sustainable economic development without substantial investment in human capital as education raises people’s productivity and creativity and promotes entrepreneurship and technological advances. Thus, if Vietnam desires to continue on its development path, it is imperative that Vietnam establishes a high quality sustainable system of vocational and higher education that will meet the needs of the modern era. How best to accomplish this task is an issue that must be addressed.

Changes Following “Doi Moi”

Following the adoption of the policy of “doi moi,” generally translated as economic renovation, Vietnam’s education system moved away from the former Soviet model in an attempt to meet the demands of a market-oriented economy. And the priority to which the government purports to place on education is stipulated in Article 35 of the current Constitution (issued in 1992): Education is the first priority of the national policy and the government has specifically stated that education and training play a very important part in the human resources development strategy.

Unfortunately, the progress to date has not lived up to these expectations. The World Economic Forum’s 2013-2014 Global Competitiveness Report (2013), for example, ranked Vietnam’s university education sector 95th out of 148 countries recently surveyed, putting Vietnam behind countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and Thailand. Poor rankings were particularly found in both the quality of the management of schools and the availability of research and training services.

The 2014 Vietnam Development Report (2014) makes clear that a skilled workforce is central to Vietnam’s economic modernization. However, a challenge is the mismatch in the labor market in which employers struggle to find the right workers. There is a desperate shortage of workers with adequate skills, which hinders the activities of businesses. The survey reports that most employers attribute difficulties in hiring new workers to either the inadequate skills of job applicants (a “skills gap”), or to a scarcity of workers in some occupations (a “skills shortage”). Thus, there is not a lack of demand for workers, but rather the workers cannot match their skills with those in need.

Often, the types of skills employers require in various occupations are relatively similar, but these skills are not sufficiently taught, at higher education institutions. There is a mismatch between What Employers Want and Need (VietnamNet Bridge, 2014) e.g., Critical thinking and problem-solving skills, Initiative and leadership potential, Creativity) and What Employees Lack (Kim, 2013) e.g., Updated knowledge about the latest technologies, Practical knowledge, Working behaviors, Foreign language skills, Discipline and professionalism.

Current Focus on Hardware

How Vietnam can address the inadequacies of its educational sector best is not entirely clear. Nevertheless, a number of possible plans have been put forth. One of the more well-publicized efforts over the past few years is the Vietnamese government’s agreement in principle to construct four international standard universities with US$400 million loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. The hope is that at least one can reach the world’s top 200 by 2020, although few newly established universities have reached that level in such a short period (Pham, 2014).

Another opportunity is a $190 million loan from the Asian Development Bank for the development of the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi. The project focuses on the establishment of a new model university focusing on teaching and research in science and technology with stronger university-industry linkages (World Bank, 2014).

More recently, the World Bank has committed US$50 million to support the implementation of policies designed to strengthen governance, financing and quality of higher education by: (i) improving the responsiveness of higher education and research and increase the quantitative capacity of the system; (ii) enhancing fiscal transparency, sustainability and effectiveness of the higher education sector; and (iii) improving the quality of higher education institutions (World Bank, 2013).

The Human Resource Development Strategy of Vietnam for the period of 2011-2020 has as one of its many goals “to build up a system of advanced, modern and diversified human training facilities and an integrated and multi-level career structure among the national and international training institutions in different levels and to create high-quality vocational schools, of which five schools will meet the international standards by 2015 and more than 10 schools will be world-class schools by 2020.”

Need to Focus on Software

The building of, or plans to build educational institutions, however, have focused primarily on expanding the “hardware”. But perhaps the Vietnam’s educational system really needs to focus on the how of addressing the severe shortage of “software” or qualified human resources such as teaching and administrative staff, as well as on teaching methods at all levels of the educational system.

The shortage of qualified faculty is especially severe at the advanced level. In 2013, for example, only eleven percent of the country’s 84 thousand lecturers held doctorate degrees, down from close to fifteen percent just a little over a decade ago. The ratio of PhD-holding lecturers per student has also fallen from 0.5% (based on one highly qualified lecturer per 200 students) in 2000 to 0.415% in 2012 (Pham, 2013).

It must also be kept in mind that quality is a subjective issue and the term doctorate in Vietnam may be misleading. Many Vietnamese PhDs in general, particularly if educated domestically, are actually educated only to the Bachelor’s level on the international scale.

In an effort to address the faculty situation, the Vietnamese government has embarked on an ambitious plan to enable individuals to pursue advanced degree programs both in Vietnam and abroad, although the target to train 20.000 Ph.D.’s by 2020 appears to be unrealistic (Dat, 2014). The educational authorities appear to be counting on outside aid and educational partnerships to assist in this undertaking. A number of countries, including the United States, Switzerland, Finland, Belgium, France, and Japan are currently providing support for such endeavors. But since funding is a scarce resource for all parties, cost effective programs are advisable and only time will tell if the current methods of training faculty are economically beneficial.

At the individual institution level, a number of public universities in Vietnam are trying to implement various measures to attract good lecturers, such as offering incentives in the form of higher wages or cheaper housing. However, salary levels remain relatively low, while teachers are expected to work long hours and handle heavy teaching loads.

In addition to the shortage of qualified teaching staff, there is a need for comprehensive changes and reforms of teaching methodology and training syllabi designs, higher capital budget allocation and the encouragement of scientific research. Areas of organizing classes, the evaluation of students, in-class presentation skills and all aspects of curriculum design and presentation should be emphasized. Faculty and administrators must also comprehend fully the importance of academic integrity and the negative consequences of corruption and plagiarism.

Recommendations

Below are a number of recommendations policymakers should consider to address the deficiencies in the educational sector.

I. Improve the Skills of the Faculty

There are a number of programs currently in existence, each with particular benefits and costs. Ideally, all faculty members would be sent abroad to quality post‐graduate programs to obtain advanced degrees in their particular field. Not only would faculty receive a high level of training, they would also be able to observe the workings of other economies, businesses, and different teaching methodologies. Such vocational and cooperative education programs would provide Vietnamese faculty with opportunities to experience work environments at the international institutions.

A less costly, but perhaps with a lower expected rate of return, is the option to conduct faculty training in Vietnam. Such programs involve foreign faculty teaming up with Vietnamese faculty. The benefits accrue to not only the participants in the program, but also to the faculty team members who often learn new and more effective ways of teaching. This can foster changes in teaching methodology and curriculum design, and address the significant problems of cheating and plagiarism that is rampant in the educational system of Vietnam (McCornac, 2012).

II. Implement Work‐Integrated Learning for Locally Based Faculty

A shortcoming of conducting training in Vietnam is the participant’s lack of real‐world exposure to the field being taught. While significant knowledge can be conveyed from the visiting instructors, textbooks and other materials, the saying that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ rings all too true. A possible solution is to have faculty serve in either a paid or unpaid internships with businesses and companies operating in Vietnam. Trade and trade and vocational occupations could serve in a form of apprenticeship to better learn necessary skills. This could be mutually beneficial in the long run as not only will faculty members be able to improve their skills, but these individuals will better understand the needs in the market for graduates in their respective discipline and hopefully gain the expertise needed to produce higher qualified graduates.

Read the full article HERE.