According to Tran Trung Hieu, the founder of TopCV, there is a high number of IT majoring graduates every year, but the number who have real capability to work for technology firms is modest.

“In Vietnam, the training by universities cannot satisfy the requirements of technology firms, which results in a lack of high-quality personnel,” he explained.

Do Ngoc Hoang, Director of FPT Software Academy, said the training quality of universities is unequal. Vietnamese students’ foreign language skills and self-learning capability are not good. Businesses have to re-train new graduates.

“Every year, FPT Software Academy organizes training for 3,000-4,000 people. The training of some skills needs to last many months to satisfy the requirements,” he said.

Experts also blame the lack of IT engineers on the tendency of working for overseas firms.

During Covid-19, when working from a distance became trendy, many businesses in Singapore, the US and Europe recruited Vietnamese high-quality workers. The workers stay in Vietnam and get pay equal to the pay of foreign workers.

“This is a great opportunity for young Vietnamese engineers, but a great challenge for Vietnamese businesses which have to compete with international firms,” Hieu said.

Golden opportunity

According to Vu Duy Thuc, the founder of OhmniLabs, Vietnam has great opportunities if it makes heavy investment in training in the field of AI right now.

Thuc said AI can be used in many fields and can create services that change business positions and new products to compete with rivals.

“The AI race is seen all over the globe. If we don’t make preparations immediately, we are likely to rely heavily on other countries,” he warned.

The number of AI engineers in Vietnam is small. The founder of OhmniLabs cited a report as saying that only 40,000 out of 400,000 engineers in Vietnam have demand for studying AI and only 4,000 have opportunities and really study AI. This means that only one percent of Vietnamese engineers have opportunities to study this major.

The Government earlier this year issued a national strategy on AI research, development and application by 2030.

Under the strategy, Vietnam would become an innovative center which develops AI solutions and applications in ASEAN and the world. Vietnam strives to be one of the top five countries in ASEAN and top 60 in the world in researching, developing and applying AI; build five famous AI brands and develop a national center on big data storage and high-performance computing.

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