Universities complain that the requirement by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) on having one PhD and three masters for every training major is unfeasible in the Vietnamese conditions. MOET has forced universities to stop 207 training majors because the schools do not satisfy the requirements on teaching staff. The schools, while admitting the lack of lecturers, have replied that there is no way to obtain enough lecturers as requested. According to Nguyen Dinh Luan, President of the Hanoi University, MOET has told the school to stop training students majoring in Portuguese, Italian languages, accountancy and Vietnamese culture. “How can we find the lecturers with doctorates for Portuguese and Italian languages, if the two countries don’t train PhDs in the majors?” Luan said. Luan has commented that MOET proves to be too “rigid” when setting the same requirements on different training majors, including the special ones. Also according to Luan, the teaching of the two languages has been undertaken by the lecturers with university degree over the last 10 years. He affirmed that all the graduates of the Italian and Portuguese faculties of the school have been very good at work. “Most of the workers at the embassies and projects where Italian and Portuguese are the two major languages are from the Hanoi University,” Luan said. The schools in the EU don’t provide training and grant bachelor degree in interpretation to non-EU citizens, but only grant certificates. Meanwhile, the foreign language faculties of the Hanoi University focus on training interpreters. “While negotiating the bilateral cooperation agreements, we put forward the cooperation in training linguistics masters, but the partners refused,” he explained. Bui Thien Du, President of the Phuong Dong University, also meets trouble with the school’s Japanese language training, even though it has a lecturer with master degree and two Japanese native speakers. Du complained that it is nearly impossible to find the lecturers with doctorate for the training at the school, and that he would ask MOET to reconsider the case and allow the school to continue providing the Japanese language training. The Hanoi Academy of Theatre and Cinema proves to be the biggest sufferer when it has been told to stop 15 training majors. Replying to the MOET’s decision, Tran Thanh Hiep, the President of the school, said theoretical knowledge and the lecturers with high education degrees are not the most important factors for art schools. A film director agreed, saying that most of the lecturers he trained do not have master or PhD degrees, but they still can create excellent art works and obtain big cinematographic achievements. “The lecturers at art schools must be the well-known artists recognized by the public, not the ones with degrees,” he commented. “The creativeness, not the degree should be highlighted as the most important requirement.” The HCM City Medical and Pharmacy University, which has been told to stop enrolling students for three majors – medical technique, dental prosthesis and physical therapy, has also complained it is impossible to find PhDs for the majors. According to Le Quan Nghiem, the President of the school, Vietnam still does not have postgraduate training courses in the major, while foreign schools’ training majors do not coincide with Vietnam’s. (VietNamNet Feb 11)
