VietNamNet Bridge - The question about whether Vietnam should remove the floor-mark mechanism has once again been raised after British media warned about the decrease in quality of university students.

The Telegraph has reported that 48 percent of 1,000 lecturers surveyed by Times Higher Education said students in the UK are not equipped with sufficient knowledge to enter college, and many of them attributed this to the lowering of requirements on admitting students.

Thirty three percent of lecturers said international students don’t have English skills good enough to follow university education. Though many students obtain bachelor’s degrees from prestigious schools in the UK, their skill of writing is poor. This is because many schools are less demanding on students.

The news has been quoted by some Vietnamese educators on their Facebook fanpage, which has once again raised a debate about the quality of Vietnam’s higher education, especially when the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) plans to remove the floor-mark mechanism.

The question about whether Vietnam should remove the floor-mark mechanism has once again been raised after British media warned about the decrease in quality of university students.

Floor mark is the minimum mark Vietnamese students must obtain from national exams to be eligible to study at any university in Vietnam.

Once the mechanism is removed, all Vietnamese students who finish high school will be eligible to study at university. Schools will decide whether to admit them.

 “The UK, with advanced education, has admitted it is meeting difficulties lowering the requirements on input students. Vietnam should learn a lesson from this,” a high-school teacher commented on his Facebook page.

The teacher does not advocate MOET’s decision to remove the floor-mark mechanism. 

“The removal of the mechanism, once applied, will make our efforts to improve the quality of higher education to be in vain,” he warned.

Meanwhile, the plan on floor-mark removal has caused concern among vocational schools (2-year training) and junior colleges (3-year training). 

“If they (MOET) really end the floor-mark mechanism, students will rush to university, and no one will go to vocational schools or junior colleges,” the principal of a Hanoi-based vocational school said. “Meanwhile, Vietnam lacks workers for factories who have good practice skills and have abundant workers with bachelor’s degree.”

Dao Trong Thi, former head of the National Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education, the Youth and Children, warned that if the mechanism is removed, nearly all Vietnamese students would go to university, because 98 percent of students can pass exams to graduate from high schools.

If so, higher education will become popular in Vietnam.

He went on to say that when universities produce low-quality graduates, the society will suffer. 

Do Van Dung, rector of the HCMC University of Technique Education, believes that if students cannot get the minimum required marks from the national exam, they will not be able to follow study at university.

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