Universities are attempting to attract students for the 2013 academic year by lowering fees, opening new faculties, or scholarships.

Student attended the 2012 university entrance exams

Vietnam National University in Hanoi will offer financial supports to students that enrol for 14 less popular faculties including oceanography, history, natural resource and environment management or anthropology. University leaders said the new courses provided graduates with more job opportunities. To realise the programme, they intended to spend VND4.2 million (USD201) per academic year per student.

Vietnam Forestry University aims to attract student by offering scholarships and subsidised tuition fees. Students that enrol into the affiliated programme on natural resource management with the US’ Colorado University will be given financial support for their English courses that are worth VND1.4 million per month. The university also offered VND1 million monthly scholarships to outstanding students.

Furthermore, they will offer a 50% discount on tuition fee for eight majors such as information technology, silviculture and mechanical engineering.

To meet market demand, Hanoi Medical University has opened a department for nutrition and dietetics and is recruiting students. According to the university, graduates could find jobs more easily in food safety and hygiene departments, major hospitals, institutes, food processing facilities or provincial health departments.

Other universities such as Haiphong University and Hanoi University of Industry also launched new scholarships and support programmes. Hanoi University of Industry offer a full tuition scholarship to South Korea, Japan, Australia or the UK for outstanding first year students.

This follows the Ministry of Education and Training temporarily halting the opening of faculties such as finance and banking from 2013.

Deputy Minister of Education and Training Bui Van Ga said, "Even private universities of economic such as HCM City University of Economics have faced difficulties due to the lack of employment opportunities in this sector. This problem was raised two years ago when it became clear the market had reached saturation point."

He said that universities this year had focused on enrolling more students for sectors with a lack of candidates, but many universities had decided to focus on technology and engineering.