In 2014, the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) issued a Circular allowing universities to run high-quality training programmes. It permitted universities to self-define the level of tuition fee based on a precise and sufficient calculation of expense for running the whole programme. This policy made high-quality programmes lucrative for some State universities to tackle financial difficulties.

In the context of Vietnamese universities kicking-off recruitment of students for the school year 2020/21, the issue of high-quality training programmes is increasingly in the spotlight. Vietnamnet, a popular e-newspaper in Vietnam, recently highlighted concerns about these types of training programmes. 

At some universities, the admission target for these programmes accounted for nearly half of regular training programmes, with a much higher tuition fee charged than for regular ones. 

For example, the University of Finance – Marketing charges a tuition fee of VND36.3 million (US$1,570) per year, the HCMC University of Technology and Education charges VND30 million per year for their high-quality programmes, as opposed to VND18.5 million (US$800) per student per year for a regular programme. 

The public concern is that money, not training quality, is the ultimate goal of running high-quality training programmes at some universities.

Read further at:

https://vietnamnet.vn/en/society/high-quality-programs-of-tertiary-education-showing-weaknesses-621539.html

https://vietnamnet.vn/en/society/schools-rush-to-run-high-quality-training-programs-that-charge-more-tuition-622861.html#inner-article

Commentary by Lien Ta, Senior Education Services Manager:

The articles mention two types of training programmes at Vietnamese universities, "advanced training programmes" and "high quality training programmes". The Vietnam TNE Market Report at https://education-services.britishcouncil.org/news/reports/transnational-education-vietnam-exploring-opportunities-uk has a section outlining the differences between these two types of programmes. It delivers useful insights for UK institutions to know about these programmes and the differences when working with Vietnamese universities.

There has been a boom in high-quality training programmes at Vietnamese universities for the past few years. While the main aim of these programmes, under the MoET scheme, is to improve the training quality of the higher education system, the quality assurance of these programmes has not been strictly controlled to ensure a consistent "high-quality" outcome for students among all universities that implement them. Under recruitment pressure, some universities had to accept students to these programmes with admission criteria even lower than for regular ones. As these programmes are required to be taught partly or totally in English, many students with low admission scores struggled with comprehension.

However, running high-quality training programmes is still the right track for Vietnamese universities in the context of higher education internationalisation and the demand to become more autonomous, both academically and financially. Universities that aim for quality are now looking for ways to improve their high-quality training programmes to ensure the best quality for their students. Developing student exchanges, academic exchanges and English summer courses with foreign partner institutions are the main activities they focus on. These are the high potential areas of partnership that UK universities need to explore and work with appropriate universities in Vietnam in the future.