Virtual filtering still raises concerns about virtualization.

TPO - The Ministry of Education and Training has begun the virtual filtering process for university admissions in 2024. This process will be conducted six times until 5 PM on August 17th. Running parallel to the Ministry of Education and Training's virtual filtering process to support universities are the Northern group, led by Hanoi University of Science and Technology, and the Southern group, led by Ho Chi Minh City National University.

The Ministry of Education and Training notes that the application processing system only serves to filter out candidates who have already been admitted to lower-priority programs at other training institutions from the provisional list of admitted students that the institutions submit to the system. The system does not have the function of adjusting the quotas or cutoff scores that the training institutions have determined. The system does not conduct admissions on behalf of the training institutions.

The admissions committee will receive complete information on the candidate's priority status after the candidate registers for admission on the system. Admissions committees that conduct early admissions without using the system's data are solely responsible for the accuracy of the information used to determine priority groups and regions. They must absolutely not impose any burdensome requirements on candidates, such as requiring them to submit or present household registration books or residence confirmation documents when carrying out administrative procedures (as stipulated by the Government ...).

The admissions centers must strictly adhere to and consistently implement the regulations regarding the list of admitted candidates. The official list of admitted candidates is the list of candidates sent back to the admissions centers by the application processing system (based on the list of prospective admitted candidates uploaded by the admissions centers to the system) after the final application processing on August 17th. Admissions centers are strictly prohibited from adjusting this official list of admitted candidates.

The Ministry of Education and Training emphasizes that educational institutions are not allowed to require candidates to confirm enrollment or enroll before August 19th, and are not allowed to close enrollment confirmation or enrollment before 5 PM on August 27th (including for joint training programs with foreign countries).

Associate Professor Vu Duy Hai, Head of the Admissions and Career Guidance Department at Hanoi University of Science and Technology, said that the Northern region's virtual filtering group received approximately 3 million applications from candidates across 60 universities in the group. During the virtual filtering process, the group will run the filtering once a day before transferring the data to the Ministry of Education and Training. Professor Hai assessed that the system is running stably this year after adjustments made last year. This year, the system recorded over 733,000 applications (equivalent to 68.5% of those taking the high school graduation exam), an increase of about 73,000 candidates compared to last year.

Concerns about unfairness due to early admissions.

The final stages of the first round of admissions for 2024 are underway. At the 2024 Higher Education Conference recently organized by the Ministry of Education and Training, leaders of the Ministry stated that, across the entire system, this year's admissions season saw higher education institutions still using many complex admission methods and schemes, and in many places, fairness was not guaranteed.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training, there are currently about 20 admission methods applied by various institutions. This situation has persisted for many years, inadvertently creating difficulties for candidates in the selection process.

According to a report by the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education and Training, in 2022 and 2023, some early admission methods had enrollment rates below 1%. In 2023 alone, 214 out of 322 educational institutions conducted early admissions with over 1.2 million successful applications. After the virtual filtering process, over 300,000 candidates were admitted through early admission. The number of candidates who registered for their first choice (and were admitted after virtual filtering) through the early admission method was over 147,000 (less than 50% of the total number of successful candidates).

Looking back at previous admission seasons, the process of eliminating "ghost" applicants (applicants who apply but don't actually enroll) remains ineffective. For example, in the 2023 admission season, despite multiple rounds of filtering, some universities still struggled to determine their cutoff scores. At that time, the Ministry of Education and Training had to postpone the announcement of university cutoff scores to assist universities in accurately filtering out these fraudulent applicants. Therefore, universities need to reconsider and analyze the quality of their incoming students based on different admission methods to eliminate ineffective ones.

Deputy Minister of Education and Training Hoang Minh Son noted that while early admissions have positive aspects, they can also distract students. Recently, many Departments of Education and Training and high schools have expressed concerns about this, as many students neglect their studies upon learning they have been admitted early. Early admissions, if used for direct admissions of highly talented and gifted students, are excellent, but if the quotas are not properly controlled, it can lead to unfairness.

Mr. Son emphasized the issue of unfairness when universities announce admission quotas early, which creates a certain degree of artificiality that is difficult to verify; or leads to some universities having a number of students admitted far exceeding their quotas. Therefore, in the next academic year, the Department of Higher Education needs to urgently coordinate to simplify and ensure the quality of admissions, as well as fairness for candidates.

Nghiem Hue

Source: https://tienphong.vn/tuyen-sinh-dh-nam-2024-loc-ao-van-lo-ao-post1663610.tpo