VietNamNet Bridge – The increasingly high unemployment rate has been attributed to the low quality, un-programed and uncontrolled training.

Looking for jobs is a big problem for the youth aged from 15 to 24 who account for up to 47 percent of the unemployed laborers.

Education and training, in the eyes of investors, is a profitable business. This explains why they have poured more and more money to set up people-founded schools. However, more and more university graduates have been reported unemployed.

The An Giang Education and Training Department’s report showed that 300 university graduates in the province have not found jobs. Most of them finished pedagogical schools.

Prior to that, in an effort to reduce the unemployment rate, the department was indisposed to recruit some pedagogical school graduates, but then allocated them to untrained jobs. The people trained to become teachers now work as the library officers or take care of students’ affairs.

The report of the Da Nang City Department of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs shows the city lacks blue collar workers, while it has abundant workers with university degree.

Also according to the department, 70 percent of the demanded laborers are unskilled workers, while employers only need 5-10 percent of workers with university degree.

Da Nang now has 8 universities which produces tens of thousands of bachelors every year. This has led to the high unemployment rate with a high percentage of university graduates unable to find jobs.

Minister of Education and Training -- Pham Vu Luan, has claimed the responsibility for the high unemployment rate, saying that the schools have been training students in their advantageous majors, not the majors the society needs.

Also according to Luan, there are 100 industrial zones and export processing zones all over the country which employ 500,000 workers at maximum. Of this amount, only 5-7 percent of workers with university degree and 8 percent of workers finishing junior colleges are demanded. Meanwhile, the enterprises most want technicians (60 percent) and unskilled workers.

Supposed that Vietnam has 10 industrial zones and export processing zones more a year, and that Vietnam needs to replace 10 percent of workers with university degree (who get retired), the schools would need to provide 13,000-15,000 new workers every year only. Meanwhile, the universities and junior colleges nationwide provide 200,000 bachelors a year.

According to Nguyen Minh Thuyet from the National Assembly’s Committee of Culture, Education, Youth and Children, in 2004, the ratio of university students on the global population was 100/10,000. The ratio was 125/10,000 in China, while it was high at 129/10,000 in Vietnam. Meanwhile, there was one enterprise in China for every 200 people, and the ratio was 800/1 in Vietnam.

A report of the Ministry of Education and Training showed that only 50 percent of university graduates can find jobs, and only 30 percent of them can find the jobs as they are trained.

The high unemployment rate has made many students, who keep the dream of following university education, shrink back.

Deputy Head of the Thanh Hoa provincial Education and Training Department --Nguyen Van Long has noted that students and their parents nowadays tend to be more practical.

“They don’t try to follow the university education any more after they found many jobless university graduates,” Long said while he commented about the sharp fall in the number of students registering to attend the university entrance exams.

Van Chung