VietNamNet Bridge  - “It is unreasonable to say Vietnam is suffering a ‘professor oversupply’,” said Tran Van Nhung, secretary general of the State’s Professorship Council, on the sidelines of the 2015 professorship title awarding ceremony held in Hanoi.

 

Tran Van Nhung, secretary general of the State’s Professorship Council

 

At the ceremony, held on November 13, the council gave certificates to 52 new professors and 470 new associate professors.

Local newspapers have recently quoted analysts as saying that Vietnam, with more than 10,000 existing professors and associate professors and 500 new professors and associate professors every year, is suffering from professoredit inflation’. 

The analysts commented that there are ‘problems’ in the granting of professorship titles which has resulted in too many professors. Meanwhile, despite the high number of professors and workers with high education levels, Vietnam remains a poor country in the world.

However, Nhung has denied an ‘oversupply’ of professors and an ‘inflation’. 

To date, the professorship title has been granted to 11,619 scientists and researchers, including 1,680 professors and 9,939 associate professors. This means that the number of associate professors is six times higher than professors. 

However, not all the 11,000 professors are in service. Many of them have retired or passed away. The number of professors and associate professors who received the titles recently is ‘just enough to replace the retired ones’.

This is why nearly 100 percent of scientists, after being recognized by the State’s Professorship Council as meeting professors’ and associate professors’ standards, have been appointed by universities to the posts of professors and associate professors there.

“I can say that the ratio of professors and associate professors is still low of the total 90 million people and the total number of university lecturers,” Nhung said.

In the 2014-2015 academic year, Vietnam had 1,825,000 university students, according to the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). There were 65,670 university lecturers, including 10,424 PhDs, 37,100 masters, 536 professors and 3,290 associate professors in the year. 

This means that there were approximately 0.06 professors and 0.36 associate professors per 10,000 people; 5.8 professors or associate professors per 100 university lecturers, and 0.21 professors or associate professors per 100 students.

The ratios are very low compared with other countries in the world. In China, for example, in 2013, there were 3.85 professors or associate professors per 10,000 people and 0.22 professors or associate professors per 100 students.

In Germany, there were three professors per 10,000 people in 2014 and 1.7 professors per 100 students. The figure is 0.62 per 10,000 people and 1.7 per 100 students in 2015 in Austria.

Under current laws, the titles of professor and associate professor can only be granted by the State’s Professorship Council. 

Thanh Mai