Ly Tu Trong College speaks out after being found guilty of many violations

TPO - The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training (DoET) has just announced the inspection results of Ly Tu Trong College in Ho Chi Minh City, pointing out 16 violations in financial management, enrollment, student records and accounting. This is considered a serious incident related to revenue, expenditure and enrollment activities of a public vocational training institution in the area.

Báo Tiền Phong•26/10/2025

Many violations in revenue, expenditure and enrollment

According to the inspection conclusion, from the 2020-2021 school year to the 2024-2025 school year, Ly Tu Trong College temporarily collected tuition fees in violation of regulations for 15,943 students, totaling more than 158 billion VND. Although the school has refunded about 137.6 billion VND, more than 20.4 billion VND has not been refunded to 2,022 students.

The Department of Education and Training affirmed that the "temporary collection of tuition fees" is only allowed to be applied to non-public educational institutions or those belonging to enterprises and economic organizations, and not to public schools such as Ly Tu Trong College. In addition, the school's temporary collection and budgeting to withdraw tuition compensation is not in accordance with regulations.

Students of Ly Tu Trong College in a practical session

In addition, the enrollment process and student records management were also identified to have many errors. Some cases have not graduated from secondary school but are still considered for admission to college; there are classes starting from the beginning of November 2022 but the admission decision was issued many months later. Some classes have up to more than 300 students, far exceeding current regulations.

In addition, assigning lecturers to teach overtime, managing bank accounts, reporting unclear financial statements and not transferring all tuition fees to the State Treasury are also violations that were clearly stated.
The Department of Education and Training determined that these acts not only violated administrative regulations in the field of vocational education , but also showed signs of violating the law on public finance, public assets and accounting, and needed to be further reviewed and handled according to authority.

Therefore, the Department of Education and Training has transferred the black file to the City Police to continue investigating and clarifying the school's signs of violations in the contents including management and use of public finance (temporary collection of tuition fees, refund of tuition fees, accounting books...); management and use of public assets...

The school speaks out

Regarding the above conclusions, in an interview with reporters, Dr. Dinh Van De - Acting Principal of Ly Tu Trong College said that the school had sent an explanatory report to the Department of Education and Training on October 2, expressing that some contents in the inspection conclusion "did not reflect the true nature of the incident, many conclusions were too harsh", which could affect the reputation of the school.

According to the explanation, the inspection team of the Department of Education and Training initially planned to work in the period 2020 - 2024, but in reality, the inspection was carried out back to 2017, forcing the school to review and extract a large number of documents, at times not being able to provide full evidence.

Regarding the amount of more than 20 billion VND that has not been repaid, according to Mr. De, the nature needs to be clearly understood. Specifically, the tuition exemption and reduction (MGHP) for colleges: 19.27 billion VND, mainly the 70% reduction in tuition fees for hazardous and arduous occupations for the 2024-2025 school year. As of March 31, 2025, this school year has not ended, so it cannot be paid to students, the amount is still in the State Treasury. According to the plan, the school will deduct the tuition fees for the first semester of the 2025-2026 school year and pay the remaining amount to students in November - December 2025, based on Notice No. 728/TB-LTTC-KHTC dated September 3, 2025.

MGHP money for T4 intermediate level (for junior high school students going to intermediate level): 1.18 billion VND, related to 328 students in the period 2021-2023. This amount has not been refunded because the students have not provided or provided incorrect bank account numbers despite the school's repeated reminders.

From March to September 2025, the school has paid an additional VND 554.7 million to 176 students, and is currently completing payment records for the remaining students. These amounts are detailed in the appendix to Explanation Report No. 815/BC-LTT-TC.

The school leader added: “We have provided complete documents and are ready to cooperate with the Department of Education and Training to verify and clarify each content. When there are official results, the Board of Directors will publicly announce them to avoid misunderstandings and misinformation.”