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The university education system in Vietnam has expanded rapidly, with the number of students increasing by an average of nine percent annually from 2001-2011, while university numbers increased by an average of eight per year and colleges by an average of 12. However, many domestic and foreign education experts and managers said that the system had not yet matched international education standards.
Vietnam's disadvantages in terms of scientific research have been emphasized. Professor Nguyen Van Tuan from Australia's Garvan Medical Institute said that scientific research was closely associated with the growth of a knowledge-based economy and greatly affected the global rating of any university. However, the presence of Vietnamese science in the international arena remains highly limited. During the 41-year period from 1970-2011, Vietnam published 10,745 scientific articles in international scientific journals. The figure accounted for 22 percent of those of Thailand, 27 percent of Malaysia and 11 percent of Singapore. The level of influence of Vietnamese scientific research projects is also the lowest among these countries. Moreover, about 80 percent of Vietnamese scientific articles resulted from cooperation with foreign colleagues. The existing reliance on foreign strength also means that scientific knowledge and achievements have not relied on Vietnamese materials. This is a weakness in the development of domestic scientific research. For years Vietnam has set aside two percent of its State Budgets (amounting to VND13 trillion) for science and technology. However, only 10 percent of the funds have been earmarked for scientific research at local and central levels, with the rest earmarked for administration and operation of research institutes and centers.
In addition, there is an imbalance between scientific research subjects. Most of Vietnam's international science publications focus on medicine, biology, physics and mathematics, largely because universities and scientific research centers have not applied standards that meet international benchmarks. Professors have also been accused of merely following domestic standards and have failed to refer greatly to scientific contributions printed in international scientific publications. This is a major reason why the Vietnamese university system is barely integrating with the international community.
Pham Thi Ly from the International Training Institute of the National University Ho Chi Minh City attributed the impossibility to meet international education standards to management problems, the shortage of talented scientists, the increasing gap between teaching and research, and improper investment. In this light, Vietnam needed to pay more attention to scientific research to create a key for the education system to integrate with the world.
Professor Martin Hayden from Australia's Southern Cross University said that Vietnam needed a more-integrated and better-connected education system and that state-owned universities needed more autonomy and a more modern framework. Scientific research funding should become more competitive, and the existing bureaucratic mechanism on scientific research funding should be replaced by competitive methods. Research foundations should be expanded among universities and research institutes following a transparent and competitive process and the opinions of independent experts.
Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Phuc Khanh, the Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Department of the Ministry of Education and Training, said that to integrate with the world, the university education system needed to renew science and technology research by categorizing university education facilities based on the quality of their education and scientific research. There should be universities specializing in scientific research, scientific application and vocational training. Policies to prioritize investment in universities with strengths in science and technology were necessary to create development engines for the Vietnamese university education system to be more able to integrate with the world.
Concurrent with the implementation of the University Education Law, the Ministry of Education and Training is drawing up a draft decree on investment in the development of science and technology potential of university education facilities focusing on building major labs in prioritized fields of science and technology, educating and re-educating scientists, ordering nationally-competitive scientific and technological products, building infrastructure and database on scientific research and information, and upgrading scientific journals to the international standard.
Many education experts and managers agreed on the need to increase budgets and distribute research assistance funds, to set scientific standards which are proportional to international ones, to encourage scientists to publish their studies on international publications, to provide preferences for young scientists who make public their studies abroad, and to produce English-language scientific publications for international distribution. Meanwhile, the State needs to develop standards for scientists including professors that must proportionate with international standards, apart from increasing investment in science and technology and reform of the scientific research system, particularly the university education system to create a combined force for the Vietnamese university education system to integrate internationally in the context of globalization./.
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