TH Group, well known in Vietnam as a dairy producer, has put TH School, providing services from preschool to high school, into operation.

The event attracted the special attention from the public because the curriculum applied at TH School allows the shortening of the time of study, i.e. students can finish high school at the age of 17.

TH School sets tuition of up to VND200 million a year, a high level if compared with the income of the majority of Vietnamese.

More and more investors have injected money into the educational sector as it is considered a gold mine

Students at TH School follow international curricula and receive internationally recognized diplomas after the graduation which allow them to transfer credit to study at universities overseas.

TH is not the first privately-run group investing in the education sector. Vietnam has a series of other private school systems bearing famous brands. These include Vinschool developed by Vingroup, a giant real estate group, FPT Education belonging to the Vietnamese largest information technology group FPT and TTC Edu put under the management of Thanh Thanh Cong Group.

Vietnam also has a series of foreign invested schools, such as RMIT University, Fulbright Vietnam and VUS, from language schools to general schools and universities. There are also international education programs and joint training programs between Vietnamese and foreign schools.

An analyst said Vietnam is a ‘gold mine’ for investors as Vietnamese are willing to spend money for education services, while the existing state-owned schools cannot provide the ‘education with international standards’ as parents want.

Many investors have poured money into the ‘gold mine’. A report of the General Statistics Office (GSO) showed that the number of non-state universities and junior colleges soared from 34 in 2005 to 88 in 2015. In 2016 alone, 70 foreign invested projects in the education sector were registered in Vietnam with the investment capital of $47 million. These included Japanese Forval and South Korean Chungdahm.

The analyst commented that despite the sky high tuition, privately run schools would still be able to attract students because the schools promise to give internationally recognized degrees, while students don’t have to go abroad and live far from families.

A report showed that Vietnamese spend $3 million a year to fund their children’s overseas study. The sum of money, according to Le Truong Tung, president of FPT, is big enough to build five Nhat Tan bridges across the Red River. However, it is just equal to the value of the beer volume consumed within one year by Vietnamese.

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