VietNamNet Bridge – The new enrolment regulations applied to the 2013-2014 academic year have embarrassed schools.

October 30 was the deadline for universities and junior colleges to enroll students for the 2013-2014 academic year. State owned schools sighed with relief as they could admit enough students, while people-founded universities, junior colleges and vocational schools enrolled few students.

The new regulations on the enrolment mechanism applied to the 2013-2014 year have been cited to explain the lack of students.

Dr. Tran Dinh Ly, Head of the Training Division of the HCM City University of Agriculture and Forestry, complained that it cannot find the students who finish junior colleges (3-year training) and continue studying at the university.

The problem lies in the Ministry of Education and Training’s new regulation which stipulates that junior college graduates, who want to follow higher education, have to attend the national university entrance exams like high school graduates.

However, the students’ exam marks were not good enough to be admitted to the school. According to Ly, only 10 percent of the examinees, who finished junior colleges, obtained the floor marks or higher.

The HCM City Food Industry University reported that 300 examinees were junior college graduates, while only 5-7 percent got the floor marks. Meanwhile, Dr. Nguyen Duc Minh from the HCM City Industry University said only 78 junior college graduates passed the exams to the university.

Floor marks are the minimum marks students must obtain from the national university entrance exams to be able to enroll in any universities or junior colleges in Vietnam. It is the Ministry of Education and Training which sets and announces the floor marks every year.

The modest numbers of students make it difficult for schools to arrange classes. Doan Thai Thanh, Head of the Training Division of the HCM City Food Industry University, said he has to put the students together with full-time students.

However, a new problem has arisen that the students, who finished junior colleges, want to study in the evening, while full-time students study in the daytime.

According to Ly, the fact that only 10 percent of junior college graduates obtaining the floor marks at the university entrance exams showed the difference in the learning capacity between them and full time students. Therefore, the regulation that junior college graduates have to attend the national entrance exams together with high school graduates has blocked their way to the higher education.

The representative of a school complained that he has never seen such a high number of “virtual” examinees before. A “Virtual examinee” is understood as the ones who registered to study at the school, but did not turn up when they are called.

He said the problem has caused a big headache to the school, because it cannot find out how many students really want to study at the school. Therefore, it cannot set reasonable requirements on students and enroll the exact numbers of students it wants.

Ly has suggested that the education ministry should set up the enrolment “quotas” for schools for a longer term, 3-5 years, instead of every year. This would allow schools to be more flexible in determining their training scale, while the training scale of the whole system would not exceed the allowed level

Chi Mai