Anticipating the gloomy future of vocational schools which cannot enroll students, investors now try to bargain the schools away to quit the unprofitable investment field. Intermediate and vocational schools are experiencing very difficult days. The new enrolment mechanism set up by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) is believed to allow more students to acquire university education. Therefore, vocational schools, which have to struggle hard now to exist with the modest numbers of students, would face even bigger difficulties in the time to come. It is estimated that tens of vocational schools have been put on sale. Most recently, the HCM City Economics & Tourist School has announced the school’s stake transferred. Prior to that, some other schools were reportedly looking for buyers or getting the stake transfer procedures completed. These included the Hong Ha Intermediate School, Mai Linh Intermediate School, Dong Nai Information and Telecommunication Technology School. Especially, some schools reportedly changed hands just after a couple of weeks of negotiations, such as Phuong Dong and Gia Dinh Schools. Explaining the investors’ moves, Bui Quang Trung, Headmaster of the HCM City Intermediate School, the new investor of the Phuong Dong School, said it is too difficult to run intermediate school nowadays. “Some investors might think that this was a fertile land. Only when you start on the work, will you see a lot of problems,” he said. “You will be punished or prohibited to enroll students if you do not strictly follow the regulations. Meanwhile, in many cases, a lot of policies put difficulties for schools,” he added. The headmaster of a vocational school admitted that the members of the board of management now try to barter the school away, because they cannot see the future of the school. The educator even thinks that the model of vocational schools would be eliminated throughout the country, once the universities’ doors open more widely to students. While some investors try to terminate the investments in intermediate schools, others try to take extra jobs to make money which can help them survive the current difficulties and wait for the support from the State. They have offered to lease the schools and material facilities to universities and junior colleges, and to lease to businesses which can use as offices. The Dong Duong Intermediate School has been used as a nursery school. The other investors, who don’t want to see their schools shut down, now attempt to ask for the permission to upgrade the schools into junior colleges (3-year training) or universities (4-5-year training), or join forces with other training establishments to run joint training programs. On March 19, about 20 intermediate and vocational schools in the south gathered at a meeting in HCM City to discuss the solutions to the current difficulties. The heads of the schools have warned that the new enrolment mechanism would not only kill intermediate schools in the immediate time, but also would cause the imbalance in the labor force in the society in the future. Vietnam would have redundant engineers, but lack skilful workers. (VietNamNet Mar 24)
