VietNamNet Bridge - Schools have been insisting on raising tuition despite complaints by students and warnings by analysts that students would not enroll. 

“I decided to suspend study for one year and will come back to school next year after one year of working,” said NKNK, a student at the HCM City Economics University.

K is well known to many students at the school because she is an active member of many social programs. K’s decision has become the topic of discussion of the school’s students.

In the first year at school, K registered to study for 36 credits and had to pay VND140,000 per credit. However, the tuition has increased almost twice to VND230,000 per credit.

“I have been taking extra jobs to earn some money to fund my study in the last few years. But the modest income will not be enough as the tuition has increased so sharply. I think I would come back to school the next year,” she said.

PVT, a first year student of the Hanoi Foreign Trade University, said she had to pay VND7.5 million in tuition for the first semester.

“I did not know before that the tuition had increased. If I had known about this before, I would have thought carefully about whether to study here,” she said.

According to Bui Quang Hung, head of the accountancy department of the HCM City Economics University where NKHK studies, the university is following the self-determination mechanism on a trial basis. 

New students now have to pay tuition of VND13 million a year, while the students who began studying at the school a few years ago pay 30 percent more than the old tuition level.

Hung said raising tuition is a must to ensure training quality, and the school offers 300 full scholarships and 302 partial scholarships to give financial support to poor students.

The head of a training division of a school said that tuition increase is inevitable, and that while the tuition increase is unbearable for the poor, this is nothing compared with the training expenses.

“University education is not general education. One should accept to pay higher for higher education,” he said.

Meanwhile, Tran Van Tien, deputy director of the HCM City Branch of the Bank for Social Purposes, said that all the students who have demand have been provided loans in the last eight years.

“No student has been reported as dropping out just because of having no money to pay tuition,” he said.

Tien Phong