VietNamNet Bridge - Reports by local education and training departments all show a sharp decrease in the number of students registering to study at university.


The number of students to attend the finals to finish high school, not to enter university, accounted for a high proportion of total students.

According to the Hoa Binh provincial Education and Training Department, 5,585 out of 8,049 students who registered to attend the 2016 finals in the province, or 69.1 percent, only wanted to graduate high school, and did not plan to continue studying at university.

The figure was 55 percent in 2015.

The number of students to attend the finals to finish high school, not to enter university, accounted for a high proportion of total students.

In Ha Giang province, 6.700 students have registered to attend the finals and only 1,800, or 26.8 percent, plan to apply for university.

Director of the Bac Kan provincial Education and Training Department Doan Van Huong said 50 percent of students won’t go to university after finishing high school.

The figures are 55 percent in Bac Giang province.

Meanwhile, 14,716 out of 66,006 students in Hanoi will only try to finish high school, a high proportion in the city's history.

Educators believe that there is now a ‘revolution’ in Vietnamese students’ thoughts. In the past, most of them wanted to go to university after finishing high school. However, they tend to be more ‘practical’ now.

A high school teacher in Hanoi noted that students seem to have realized that bachelor’s degree won’t necessarily help them get good jobs in the future. The latest bulletin said 225,000 university graduates are jobless.

However, he noted that the students who only want to finish high school are mostly from poor localities. Meanwhile, students in large cities like Hanoi, HCM City and Da Nang are still running a race for seats at university.

According to the Hoa Binh provincial Education and Training Department, the improvement in career guidance at schools in recent years has helped change students’ minds.

“Students have realized that it would be better to go to vocational school and become garment workers just after six months of training with monthly income of VND6-7 million a month, than spend four years at university and not be sure about future jobs,” an official of the department said.

Tran Xuan Nhi, former Deputy Minister of Education and Training, commented that the higher percentage of students not intending to study at university should be seen as good news. 

“This shows that the so called ‘engineer abundance and worker deficiency’ in Vietnam will no longer exist,” he said.

‘Engineer abundance and worker deficiency’ is the phrase commonly used in Vietnam to describe the oversupply of workers with bachelor’s degrees and the short supply of skilled workers for factories.

Tien Phong