The multi-million dollar Vietnam National University campus in Hanoi's Hoa Lac has stumbled from one crisis to another over the past decade.

 A layout of the Vietnam National University campus

The 1,222 ha project, which was started in 2003 was expected to become a modern centre for higher and postgraduate education, science and technology research by 2020, but it is still far from complete. The project still lacks capital, and there is slow progress in site clearance and resettlement for displaced residents.

Tien Phong newspaper visited the site in late April an found hundreds of hectares of land largely abandoned.

After more than 10 years, only some small work has been completed including a centre for military training, a dormitory, a guest house and some roads while almost none of the important work has yet to take shape.

 A dormitory was completed in 2014

According to an anonymous representative from the Ministry of Construction, the spokesperson said the ministry had many difficulties carry out the project because of the changes in compensation rate for site clearance and also in the project scale from 13 works to serve 41 thousand students to 21 works to serve 60 thousand students. The changes took much longer than expected.

"The biggest difficulty, however, is to find enough funds for the project as government funding alone isn’t enough," the representative said.

"The government allocated over three hundred billion dong to the project every year. VND430 billion (USD15.23 million) was provided this year. But we need three or four times that every year to actually finish the project on time."

The ministry has tried to call on private investment for the project, but none seemed interested in the profit potential of a university.

The hugely ambitious project so far resembles more of a white elephant than a modern university campus. 

Dtinews