According to Associate Professor Dr. Do Van Dung, former Rector of Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education, based on this year's enrollment data, this situation not only reflects fierce competition but also reveals social and geographical inequalities and training quality issues, seriously affecting students nationwide's access to higher education .
Southern universities such as the Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics , Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, Ho Chi Minh City University of Education and Technology, and member universities of the Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City use methods such as reviewing academic transcripts, direct admission, and considering scores from the Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City's aptitude test. This results in a fragmented enrollment quota, leading to a situation of "low supply - high demand," which drives up the cutoff scores.
Mr. Dung cited the example of English language teaching programs at some universities, where the quotas allocated by the Ministry of Education and Training are very limited. After deducting the number of students admitted directly (which is quite large) and other admission methods, the quota for admission based on high school graduation exam results is only about 5-15. This explains why the cut-off score for this program is above 29/30.
One important but often overlooked reason is the way schools apply percentiles to convert high school transcript scores to high school exam scores. Due to concerns about not meeting enrollment targets, coupled with the large number of applicants applying based on transcripts (accounting for 20-60% of the total enrollment in many schools), schools have implemented conversion formulas with very small differences, often only 1-1.5 points.
For example, a GPA of 29/30 (an average of 9.67 per subject) is converted to 28/30 on the high school graduation exam. This pushes the overall cutoff score higher. This conversion formula is not rigorous and does not accurately reflect the difference in difficulty between the high school transcript (which is easily manipulated or inconsistent across high schools) and the national standardized high school graduation exam.
According to Associate Professor Do Van Dung, the consequence of this is unusually high admission scores, eliminating many potential candidates. Admission scores based on high school exam results often range from 24-26 points in many majors, and even up to 30 points in some top universities, making it difficult for candidates with good but not outstanding academic abilities to get admitted.
They are forced to switch to other methods, but not everyone has access to them. Students in remote areas are severely disadvantaged when separate exams are used by many schools, with results mainly concentrated in large cities and urban areas.
Students in disadvantaged, remote rural areas often lack nearby exam locations, requiring them to travel hundreds of kilometers, incurring significant costs and time. While students in remote areas primarily rely on their high school exam scores, the high cut-off scores in many places due to the aforementioned reasons lead to unfair failure.
To address this, it is necessary to expand the locations of separate entrance exams nationwide, tighten the criteria for evaluating academic transcripts, adjust the percentile conversion formula to be more reasonable, and balance the quotas between different methods to ensure social equity and improve the quality of higher education.
The method of evaluating students based on academic transcripts is used by many schools, but it is difficult to verify the quality and does not reflect actual abilities. As a result, students evaluated based on transcripts often fall behind in the curriculum, causing significant difficulties for lecturers. Uneven class sizes not only affect the quality of education but also create unfairness for students, who have already competed fiercely but are forced to study with a group of students with lower entry qualifications.
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Source: https://tienphong.vn/bat-cong-cho-sinh-vien-post1772222.tpo
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