Education
Universities oppose ministry ban on new enrollments
  • | Tuoi Tre | January 06, 2012 09:22 PM

Three local universities have publicly protested a ban on their July enrollment that was recently enacted by the Ministry of Education and Training, which explained they had not met its requirements for facilities and student-lecturer ratios.  
 

Academic affairs officers at the HCMC-based Van Hien University are checking out applications in this photo illustration. 
Nguyen Tac Anh, president of the Information Technology College Ho Chi Minh City, one of the three punished institutions, complained to Sai Gon Tiep Thi newspaper that he did not understand why the ministry had announced the ban on his school.

Anh pointed out that its actual student-lecturer ratio is nearly three times lower than the figure the ministry announced after its recent inspection, whereas the school’s new 1.4 ha campus, which is under construction, was not included when the education watchdog calculated its teaching space.

Many other schools which have a higher ratio than the tech school’s have not been forbidden from enrolling new students, he grumbled.

The president said the school’s management board was preparing an appeal to the ministry.

But on Wednesday Dat Viet newspaper reported that the school still accepts the ban and will not enroll new students for the next school year starting in eight months.

Nguyen Mong Hung, president of the second banned higher institution, Van Hien University, which is based in the southern hub, expressed his point-blank opposition to the enrollment prohibition imposed on his school, and asked the ministry to review its decision.

The board chairman of Dong Do University in Hanoi, the other school, told Dat Viet that the ministry had used outdated statistics when working out its number of students.

“The supervisory body did not properly count our faculty members as it did at other schools,” Nguyen Thanh Tinh, the chairman, added.

“That’s why it obtained a very high student-lecturer ratio.”

The bans are the result of the ministry’s inspections of the trio in 2011’s last quarter that showed their student-lecturer ratios well exceeded the national standards, meaning a lecturer has to teach too many students, while also failing to own an appropriate amount of teaching space. 

Universities in Vietnam start enrolling students in July for the new school year that often begins two months later.

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