VietNamNet Bridge - After 10 years of applying the autonomy policy on a trial basis, only 14 universities have been exercising financial self-control. Most schools don’t want autonomy, but would prefer to continue receiving financial support from the state.

Nguyen Minh Thuyet, former deputy chair of the National Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education, the Youth and Children, commented that the majority of schools had not designed new enrollment methods for 2017, which show that they don’t want autonomy.

Autonomy’ means self-determination for schools. They can make decisions on many issues including the enrollment plan, tuition, syllabi and scientific research, while they have to make money to maintain their operation. 

Many schools have no other source of income except tuition.

Hoang Van Chau, former president of the Hanoi University of Foreign Trade, which has been applying the self-control mechanism for the last four years, said while the school has to arrange money for regular expenses, it cannot enjoy any privileges compared with other schools. Therefore, in order to maintain operation, the school has to ‘fasten its belt’.

Huynh Thanh Dat, deputy director of the HCMC National University, while saying that autonomy has helped the school promote the entire system, complained about the lack of a flexible mechanism for the school to provide services to improve the sources of income.

The school wants to take full advantage of the existing facilities and cooperate with investors to have more money to serve scientific research. However, with the current regulations, this is not an easy to do.

Nguyen Truong Giang from the Ministry of Finance stressed that in principle, schools can determine the tuition level, but this does not mean they set sky-high tuition levels.

“The tuition rise must be implemented in a reasonable way to cover the training cost and improve the training quality on the basis of healthy competition among schools,” he said.

A report shows that the average tuition in 2015 was VND13 million per student. The highest tuition level was the one set by the HCMC Food Processing University, at VND14.5 million a month, while the lowest was that of the Hanoi University, at VND7.8 million a month. 

Tran Quoc Toan from the Central Theoretical Council commented that some education establishments hesitated to apply the autonomy policy because they are afraid of taking responsibility for their training while they want to continue enjoying the subsidy.

Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam, who attended a recent conference on universities’ autonomy, tried to reassure self-determined schools, saying that when the state gives autonomy to schools, it does not intend to ‘abandon’ schools.

Chi Mai