There is a proposal to postpone the passing of the revised Law on University Education.

This proposal was made at a workshop to provide comments on the draft law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on UniversityEducation organized by the Standing Committee of the Ho Chi Minh City National Assembly Delegation on the morning of September 21. The workshop aimed to provide comments on the draft law before it is approved at the 6th session of the 14th National Assembly.

There are many problems with the wording.

Former Chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council Pham Phuong Thao pointed out many problems with this draft. For example, a law article of 3 pages is too wordy. Of the 37 amendments, the provision assigned to the Government to regulate has 10 articles, which is too many.

According to Ms. Thao, there are contents that are illegal and need to be clear, otherwise they should not be included. For example, regarding quality assurance, who can accurately count the number of students who have jobs at that school? Even if there are jobs, quality assessment must have a sociological survey from employers to be reliable. "There are schools that say that 80-90% of their students have jobs, but is that reliable?", Ms. Thao questioned.

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Associate Professor, Dr. Thai Ba Can, Principal of Hong Bang International University, also said that some concepts in the draft are contradictory. For example, Article 1 stipulates that university education is the undergraduate, master's and doctoral levels. Meanwhile, Article 11 stipulates that universities train at levels after general education - a very large area.

Similarly, Dr. Phan Hai Ho, Head of the Department of Administrative Management, Ho Chi Minh City Academy of Officials, also said that this draft has some long-winded explanations of terms. In Clause 2, Article 54, the terminology is used inconsistently, sometimes “lecturer title” and sometimes “lecturer professional title”.

Meanwhile, Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hoai Thang, Head of Training Department of Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, said that Article 54 has commendable details. Previous regulations caused schools to get stuck in practical activities. With the regulation that university lecturers must have a master's degree or higher, but Article 54 has an additional note "except teaching assistants", it is commendable.

Faced with many issues raised, Professor Pham Phu, former lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, suggested that the draft should be boldly postponed. At the same time, a research team should be established to develop a revised Law on Higher Education, with special attention paid to financial reform.

Mr. Phan Nguyen Nhu Khue, Deputy Head of the National Assembly Delegation of Ho Chi Minh City, said: "In fact, the National Assembly Standing Committee also considered and found that this amendment basically satisfied some initial aspects. However, during the discussion process, we will systematize it and directly report in specific documents to the members of the drafting committee for a more complete view."

Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Phung, Director of the Department of Higher Education (Ministry of Education and Training), said: "The workshop had many different opinions, so we tried to absorb the most common issues. Some of the contents have been revised in the draft, but because the time to send the new draft to the delegates was a bit urgent, the delegates could not fully grasp the content."

Just establish more schools to be called "Universities"?

Many opinions focus on discussing the conditions for converting "university" into "university" based on this draft.

Failure to conduct an assessment will result in a 5-year suspension of enrollment?

Some delegates raised the issue of sanctions in ensuring university quality. Ms. Pham Phuong Thao said: “Article 33 stipulates that schools that do not conduct accreditation or do not meet the requirements will have their enrollment suspended for 5 years. Article 34 also states that if they violate enrollment targets, they will not be allowed to determine their own enrollment targets for the next 5 years. Is this sanction period too long?”

In response to these concerns, Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Phung said that if one carefully studies the regulations of foreign universities, the sanctions must always be strict so that just reading them will not dare to violate them. The more autonomous the regulations, the more severe the sanctions.

Up to now, the whole country has had 117 universities granted certificates of educational quality accreditation.

Associate Professor, Dr. Tran Diep Tuan, Principal of Ho Chi Minh City University of Medicine and Pharmacy, commented: “According to this draft, universities must be multidisciplinary training schools. If understood in a certain sense, health training schools like ours will never become a university. In the world, there are famous universities that only train in health majors but are still universities with 4 schools. So is the concept of university appropriate?”

Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Van Ang, Vice Principal of Van Lang University, also wondered: "If according to this draft, Van Lang University wants to become a university and must establish a number of schools within the university, is that appropriate? There should be criteria set for schools to strive to achieve in order to become a university, not something that someone else has given."

Regarding this issue, Associate Professor, Dr. Thai Ba Can suggested: "The concept of a university as a large university is incorrect, because a university cannot expand into many fields to become a university."

Professor Pham Phu has many concerns about the concept of “National University”. According to Mr. Phu, this University was initially created as a multidisciplinary, multi-field university but was merged from many specialized training schools. Over time, this model has not been promoted much. Therefore, according to Professor Phu, first of all, the National University should be made into an association, temporarily allowing member universities to establish university councils and granting autonomy. In the long term, the University cannot merge universities together.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Phung said that “school” is understood as a unit or department of a university, without a separate account. A university can have member universities, schools, and even faculties. Ms. Phung said that she will take note and propose to reconsider the condition that a university needs to have member schools to become a university.

Public and private schools have equal opportunities to become university students.

In a further discussion with Thanh Nien reporters, Ms. Phung said that according to the draft law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Higher Education, higher education institutions include universities, colleges, and academies. Universities and colleges (collectively referred to as universities) are higher education institutions that train in one or more fields; have faculties, departments; schools, institutes (if any) and a number of other units.

In the current system of Vietnam, there are mainly universities. In terms of training, there can be 1-2 or more fields. In terms of organization, there are usually faculties and departments.

The draft stipulates that universities can establish internal schools (called schools in foreign countries). For example, Can Tho University can have a school of agriculture and forestry, a school of education, a school of technology... Polytechnic University can have a school of engineering, a school of technology, a school of economics... Usually each field or a number of close fields are undertaken by a school.

When training in many fields, universities can remain universities (of which there are many), or can be converted into universities according to Government regulations.

A university is a higher education institution that trains in many fields, including universities and/or schools, research institutes and a number of other units that agree to carry out common goals, missions and tasks.

Thus, universities must be multidisciplinary higher education institutions. Currently, there are only 5 universities established by the state more than 20 years ago by administratively merging universities in the area. However, now there is no longer a state policy to merge universities into universities by administrative measures. Universities, if they agree to implement common goals, missions, and tasks... can voluntarily merge into universities to join forces and develop, that is the autonomy of the schools.

There are two ways to form a university: universities merge together or a university grows stronger and develops into a university. This means equal opportunities for the development of higher education institutions throughout the system, not limited to only the 5 universities previously established by the state. Public and private universities can merge together to grow stronger, compete domestically and internationally, improve rankings and develop together.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/co-y-kien-de-nghi-hoan-thong-qua-luat-giao-duc-dh-sua-doi-185790623.htm