Despite great efforts, universities say they can only find 50 percent of the number of lecturers they need. University graduates do not want to become university lecturers.

The Ho Chi Minh City University of Technical Education has finished the second phase of recruiting lecturers. The university planned to recruit 60 lecturers, but only 35 were selected from 110 candidates.

However, the university still does not know exactly how many new lecturers it will need.  “35 candidates have been chosen from the competition, but we are not sure that all 35 selected people will turn up to sign labor contracts,” an official from the personnel department said.

Sixty-five people registered to attend the competition to become lecturers at the University for Finance and Marketing, but only 31 people attended the competition, and only six people were chosen.

Dinh Trung Chanh, Head of the Personnel Division of the Ho Chi Minh City University of Agriculture and Forestry, said the university plans to recruit 46 lecturers and four engineers this year. However, Chanh said it is not likely that they will be able to recruit enough lecturers.

The Ho Chi Minh City University of Law is also looking to hire lecturers. The university is allowed to have 323 people on the payroll, including 235 lecturers. However, it currently only has 200 lecturers.  Mai Hong Quy, president of the university, said the university organizes competitions every year to select lecturers, but it still cannot find enough lecturers.

In fact, the number of students graduating from universities every year is very large, and many of them graduate from schools with “good” and “excellent” marks. However, most of them do not want to become lecturers.

Chanh said that in previous years, many good and excellent graduates wanted to stay at school to become lecturers. However, the situation is quite different now. Only five students who received seven marks or higher during the latest final exams have registered to attend the competition to become school lecturers. At the Ho Chi Minh City Banking University, only two graduates in 2009 with “good” marks registered to attend the competition.

When asked why university graduates do not want to become lecturers, Nguyen Ngoc Thu, an officer of the Personnel Department of the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technical Education, said good and excellent graduates can easily find jobs that can bring in salaries much higher than lecturer salaries.  At the university, newly recruited lecturers experience a probation period that lasts one year during which they can only receive 85 percent of their base salary. Though the school gives allowances to newly recruited lecturers, their total income is still low, at about three million dong per month.

Chanh also admitted that the salaries lecturers receive from universities are always much lower than the sums of money they would get if they worked for companies.

“Some students want to become lecturers. However, they work for universities mainly because they want to obtain scholarships to study abroad,” Chanh said.

Universities nowadays are also facing “brain drain.” Chanh said every year, the university sends a high number of lecturers to training courses to receive master’s and doctorate degrees. However, after finishing the training courses, they decide to quit the university to seek new jobs.

Representatives from universities all say that universities will be able to recruit enough lecturers once wages have improved.

According to the Ministry of Education and Training, in 1987-2009, the number of students was thirteen times higher, while the number of lecturers only tripled.

The current average ratio of students for every lecturer is very high at 28 students/1 lecturer. The ratio is especially high at some schools. The ratio at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Foreign Languages and Information Technology, for example, is 47.3/1. At the Ho Chi Minh City Open University, the ratio is 41.2, and at Hong Bang University, the ratio is 40.2/1.