According to Le Viet Khuyen from the Vietnam Association of Universities and Junior Colleges, the Prime Minister’s Decision on the national educational system dated in October 2016 stipulates that the time for university education would be 3-5 years. 

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Decision on the national qualification frame signed by Deputy PM Vu Duc Dam on the same day stipulates that university students must have 120 credits at minimum.

Also according to Khuyen, in international practice, every training year is designed to comprise 30 credits. As such, 120 credits for university education needs to be fulfilled within four years.

If shortening the university period to three years, there will be two options. First, increasing the training volume every year instead of cutting the number of credits. Second, adding more knowledge to be learned for general education. The latter solution is unfeasible because the curriculum for general education has been criticized as overloaded. 

Educators, while agreeing that it is necessary to shorten the university training time, have not made decisions about what to do to reach that goal.

However, a problem may arise that if the curriculum is expanded in option one, this would be a burden on average students. The standards for good students must not be applied to the common curriculum. 

“It would be a heavy workload for average students to fulfill 40 credits within one year,” Khuyen said.

Khuyen thinks the curriculum must be re-designed by integrating subjects instead of cutting the volume of knowledge.

“Only by doing this will Vietnamese workers be able to compete with regional workers, or they will have to undergo re-training after the graduation,” he said.

“There is only one way to follow – increasing the intensity to cut training time,” he concluded.

When asked which subjects should be cut to make the curriculum fit the 3-year training frame, Do Van Dung, rector of the HCMC University of Technique Education, said schools must not eliminate general subjects.

Dung said in the digital era, it is normal that university graduates don’t always get a job in their training major. A report showed that only 60 percent of university graduates work in fields which are not their training majors. In these cases, general learning subjects will be their ‘lifebuoy’.

A university lecturer suggested that national defense education, physical education and foreign languages should be weeded out from the official curriculum. This means students could study elsewhere to obtain certificates instead of at a university.

Le Huyen