VietNamNet Bridge - The $1.5 billion Vietnamese spend every year on overseas study, in the eyes of analysts, is a reflection on the poor education at local schools. 

In 2013, the amount of money Vietnamese parents spent to fund their children’s studies overseas for the first time exceeded $1 billion. The figure rose to $1.5 billion in 2014.

The Ministry of Finance confirmed that roughly $1 billion is remitted abroad every year by Vietnamese to fund their children’s education.

The number of Vietnamese students studying abroad in the last five years soared by 675 percent.

Bellerbys College belonging to Study Group in the UK, present in Vietnam since 2000, reported that it has educated over 1,000 Vietnamese students.

Open Doors, an international education exchange report, showed that Vietnam is among the 10 countries with the highest numbers of students studying in the US.

Meanwhile, according to the Ministry of Education and Training, the number of Vietnamese overseas students has been increasing rapidly. There are 110,000 students studying in 47 countries and territories. 

Ten percent of the students study on the state budget, governments’ education exchange programs and scholarships granted by schools. Meanwhile, the others are self-sufficient students.

Studying overseas is considered quite normal in the context of international integration. However, analysts believe this, to some extent, shows the students’ disappointment about domestic education.

Tran Van Thong, 57, said he spends VND2 billion a year to fund the study of his two daughters in the US and the UK.

“I am disappointed about Vietnamese education which focuses on producing scholars, not skilled employees for the national economy,” he said.

Professor Nguyen Minh Duong, member of the government’s national council for education and human resource development, noted that Vietnam is now at a risk of lacking a workforce qualified enough to satisfy the requirements of industrialization and modernization.

Duong noted that existing training establishments have been following out-of-date training curricula which put theory before practice. This explains why the majority of Vietnamese school graduates cannot meet job requirements.

Professor Nguyen Minh Thuyet noted that Vietnam does not make discoveries in basic sciences and instead should focus on applied sciences, which help improve product quality and competitiveness.

The director of an electronics manufacturing enterprise complained that it is difficult to find Vietnamese engineers who can satisfy requirements, which explains why many posts at the enterprise have been left vacant. 

Navigos Search, a provider of executive search and management consultancy services in Vietnam, confirmed that the demand for engineers and technical officers in electronics assembling accounts for 14 percent of total labor demand.

Kim Chi