The Hanoi University of Technology

Hundreds of millions of workers may lose jobs

Phan Quang Trung, deputy chair of the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges (AVU&C), said like previous industrial revolutions, the 4.0 revolution may create greater inequality and cause major shifts in the labor market.

McDonalds last year announced it would build 25,000 factories run mostly with robots. In May 2016, Foxconn announced a plan to cut 60,000 workers and replace them with robots. 

In November 2015, a British bank forecasted that 95 million jobs would be lost in 10-20 years in the US and the UK alone, or 50 percent of the labor force of the two countries.

The 4.0 revolution will put university education establishments at big challenges. Universities may not be able to predict the working skills that the labor market would need in the near future because the technology would change rapidly.

Online education modes, such as MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) are believed to become more popular. 

Pham Thi Ly from Nguyen Tat Thanh University commented that universities’ functions are training and conducting research, but a large part of research funding has moved to large corporations. 

Many universities produce workers who cannot adapt to the new circumstances and  need to be retrained by employers.

Quach Tuan Ngoc, former head of the Information Technology Agency, an arm of the Ministry of Education and Training, thinks that when the 4.0 revolution breaks out, unskilled workers will become unemployed. 

Vietnamese educators anticipate that the fourth industrial revolution will have a major impact on traditional education.

“Nearly 90 percent of Vietnamese workers are unskilled. Where to get money to buy robots? Meanwhile, foreign enterprises come to Vietnam just to assemble products and they will bring highly qualified workers from their home countries to Vietnam,” said Le Viet Khuyen from AVU&C.

Integrating traditional & online education 

Ngoc said that if Vietnamese universities do not adapt, they won’t be able to exist in the 4.0 revolution.

One of the growing tendencies of modern times is online schooling. However, traditional training and schools will still exist because it allows interaction between people.

Ngoc said the solution is integrating traditional and online education.

Hoang Minh Son, rector of Hanoi University of Technology, believes that the 4.0 revolution will use smart technology and artificial intelligence. The platform of the revolution is information technology, and electronics & telecommunications technologies, Polytechnic universities will be first affected by the revolution and will strongly develop as a result.


Thanh Mai