VietNamNet Bridge – Tran Van Nhung, Phd, secretary general of the Professorship Council, disagrees with the opinion that Vietnam has too many professors and associate professors.

Professor Phan Thanh Son Nam

The professor and associate professor titles have been granted to 11,097 lecturers and scientists over the last 38 years, from 1976 to 2014.

The youngest professor received the title in 2014, when he was 37, while the oldest was 81.

Nhung said that there are 90 million Vietnamese, 1.73 million university students and 74,630 university lecturers, including 4,155 professors and associate professors.

Based on those figures, there are only 1.2 professors and associate professors per every 10,000 people.

This counts professors who have died or retired. And there is one professor or associate professor for every 416 students.

The figures are much lower than that in Germany, for example, where there are three professors for every 10,000 people and one professor for every 59 students.

“The statistics show that the number of professors and associate professors in Vietnam is very modest, and Vietnam does not suffer “professor inflation” as some people think,” Nhung said.

The ceremony on awarding the professorship title to 59 professors and 585 associate professors took place in Hanoi February 4.

Nhung noted that there were more candidates for the professorship title who have their scientific research works published internationally this year, especially in the natural sciences, technology and healthcare. The foreign language skills of the candidates are also better.

The youngest professor is Phan Thanh Son Nam, 37, a chemistry lecturer at the HCM City University of Technology.

Son was a postgraduate in the UK with a scholarship granted by the government’s Program 322, and fulfilled postdoc work in the US. He is the author of 62 scientific articles published in domestic journals and 37 articles in international journals, including 22 SCI and 15 SCIE articles with a high IF index.

There are two other scientists who also have become professors at the age of 37 (they were several months older than Nam) – Professor of Mathematics Nguyen Quang Dieu, who got the title in 2011 and Professor of  earth science Hoang Ngoc Ha in 1996.

Tu Trung Kien from the Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry and Dr. Hoang Quy Tinh from the Hanoi University of Education were the youngest associate professors in the 2014 awarding campaign. Both of them were born in 1981.

However, the record for “youngest associate professor” is held by Dr. Math Pham Hoang Hiep from the Hanoi University of Education, who received the title in 2011, and Nguyen Khanh Dieu Hong, a chemistry scientist, in 2012.

Tien Phong