The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has stated that it would restructure the training establishment network and stop the “university bubble.”

The report of MOET on the programming the training establishment network in 2013 emphasized that there would be no change in the number of the schools belonging to the ministry, while the enrolment quotas would be stabilized.

MOET would soon set up the regulation on the establishment, merger or splitting universities, while considering the establishment of university branches.

MOET has submitted to the Prime Minister the report on checking and adjusting the programming on university and junior college network before a new regulation is promulgated.

MOET said that from now to 2015, the ministry would only consider the applications for setting up new schools which have got the nod from the Prime Minister already. Meanwhile, it would say “no” to any other plans to set up training establishments so as to stabilize the network scale by 2020.

MOET’s Minister Pham Vu Luan has affirmed that no business administration, finance and banking, economics schools would be opened. The decision has been made after a lot of economics related schools have been established to satisfy the increasingly high demand from students, which has led to the oversupply of economics bachelors.

Elaborating on the university restructuring, Deputy Minister of MOET Bui Van Ga said in 2013, the ministry would announce the criteria for differentiating the schools operating for profit and non-profit schools. He said the schools operating for profit purpose would have to bear tax and specific management policies.

Regarding the “university bubble,” analysts have pointed out that the establishment of private and people-founded schools in masses has led to the current problem: the schools sit idle with no students.

People believe that students turn their backs to non-state owned universities because of the low training quality provided by the schools. However, the schools have denied this, saying that the problem here is the indifference by the State. They also said that the State “gave birth to people founded schools, but it has abandoned them.”

Meanwhile, Nguyen Thi Thanh, a VietNamNet’s reader, said people-founded schools should not expect the intervention from the State.

“They are the investors and they need to accept the market rules. Will they shout for help any time when they meet difficulties?” Thanh questioned, emphasizing that the State must not use the money collected from people’s tax payment to rescue the businesses.

Phu Quang, also a reader, believes that people founded schools should think of shutting down, if they cannot improve the training quality. After Da Nang, many other localities have announced that they would not accept the officers who finish people founded schools. Therefore, it is understandable why people founded schools cannot attract students.

In fact, according to Bui Van Ga, Deputy Minister of Education and Training, not all people founded schools meet difficulties in enrolling students. The Thang Long University, the HCM City University of Technology, for example, still can attract a lot of students. It is because they have reasonable development strategies, which allow graduates easily find jobs after finishing schools.

Meanwhile, other schools have been focusing on economics relating majors, thus leading to the oversupply. Therefore, the thing that people founded schools need to do is to improve the training quality instead of complaining.

“MOET always creates most favorable conditions for people founded schools to be developed, but this does not mean that the quality requirement would be ignored,” Ga said.