VietNamNet Bridge – University lecturers do not want to spend time on scientific research because they have to spend time on other responsibilities which can bring them money. That explains why many lecturers, though not having done  scientific research work for a long time, can still teach at classes.

Lecturers busy with teaching, forgetting about scientific research

Dr Le Thi Tuyet Hanh from the Education Management Institute said that for many university lecturers scientific research is not the “vital need”. For example, the Hanoi National University, has to return hundreds of millions dong or billions dong of the state budget allocated to the university every year to fund scientific research, because the school did not use the money.

According to Associate Professor Dr Nguyen Manh Quan from the Hanoi Economics University, in the last 10 years, every professor and associate professor in Vietnam has published 0.58 scientific articles. Meanwhile, schools are facing difficulties with transferring technology. At universities, lecturers have been focusing on teaching in order to earn money, while they do not have much time to spend on scientific research. 

Le Minh Tien, Lecturer of the HCM City Open University, also said that the main source of income of lecturers comes from teaching. Lecturers do not want to spend money on conducting research because this work takes a lot of time, and it does not contribute to their salary. In general, every lecturer has teaching hours 200-300 percent more than the number of hours they are required to have. 

Associate Professor Bui Van Mien from the HCM City Agriculture and Forestry University, said that a lecturer of state-owned schools would get 25,000 dong for every standard teaching hour, while the lecturers with titles of associate professor or professor would get 50,000 dong at maximum. Meanwhile, private independent run schools pay 80,000-120,000 dong for every teaching hour. The high pay has prompted lecturers of state owned schools to rush to have extra teaching hours at private schools.

Tien said that lecturers nowadays do not have the “driving force” for scientific research, therefore it is understandable why they do not wish to spend time on this work. Meanwhile, there is no regulation about how lecturers will be punished if they do not fulfill their scientific research duties. Many lecturers, though having no scientific research projects for a long time, still can teach at classes.

What to do to settle the problems?

Tien has suggested applying a new method which he believes will help encourage lecturers to do scientific research. He said that it is necessary to allow lecturers to convert the hours spent on scientific research into teaching hours. This means that if lecturers spent significant time on scientific research, they will be able to reduce the number of teaching hours. The mechanism, if applied, will allow lecturers to live on scientific research.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Quoc Vong, a lecturer of Hanoi Agriculture University and RMIT, said that there is no need to encourage all the current 61,000 university lecturers to conduct scientific research and allocate budgets to all of them. Now, each scientific research can receive 10 million dong from the state budget, and the egalitarianism is clearly unreasonable. It will be impossible to have outstanding scientific research with such modest fund. The state should concentrate only on some key universities and help the universities become research universities.

Source: Nguoi lao dong