VietNamNet Bridge – “As stupid as in-service courses’ students” is the saying which shows the low quality of the in-service training provided by universities.

Schools earn their living on in-service training

Nguyen Cao Dat, Vice President of the Cuu Long University, commented that educators should not feel hurt when being criticized about the low quality of in-service training.

“A lot of local state agencies refuse to recruit the candidates with in-service training degrees. It’s because the qualification of the candidates cannot meet the requirements,” Dat said.

However, more and more in-service training courses have been opened, while more and more schools have provided in-service training courses, because the type of training, as schools admitted, is their most important “bread earner.”

It is not full-time training, scientific research or the projects carried out under the cooperation with businesses, but it is the in-service training which brings the main source of income for schools.

Phan Huy Quang from the HCM City Law University, said the school’s building in district 4 has been built with the money partially coming from in-service training services.

“In-service” means “work-study-play”

University lecturers understand well why they need to give lectures to in-service students. Meanwhile, in-service students, who go to class in the evening and to work in the day, do not know well what they study for. A lot of them attend training courses just to get more university degrees which may be useful for their job promotion later.

Therefore, the lesson time, for the students, is the time for play and relax.

Dat from Cuu Long University said he many times saw students inviting lecturers to dancing halls or karaoke shops, the places which are believed the origins of social evils.

Pham Thi Tam, a lecturer of the HCM City University of Social Sciences and Humanity, noted that teachers do not pay appropriate attention to the teaching and providing knowledge. They usually recommend students taking “fact finding trips”. Meanwhile, the “fact finding trips” mean the excursion or travel to amusement parks.

The trips benefit both the lecturers and students. Lecturers don’t have to spend time on teaching, while students don’t have to go to class, but they still can fulfill the training courses and obtain university degrees.

In order to maintain the livelihood, universities need to enroll more students for the in-service training courses. And in order to retain the students, the schools need to “create most favorable conditions” for the students to get good marks, graduate the schools and obtain degrees, even if they are weak in learning capability.

The future of in-service training

Quang from the HCM City law school admitted that if schools only focus on enrolling as more students as they can to earn more money, the in-service training quality would never be improved.

Meanwhile, Dat has warned that if the training quality cannot be improved, employers will refuse in-service training graduates. If so, the in-service training degrees will be … thrown into dustbin, while there would be no more learners. This means that schools will not be able to enroll students for in-service training any more and they will lose the “means of subsistence.”

Compiled by C. V