What did the Deputy Minister of Education and Training say?

At the regular Government press conference on the afternoon of August 5, Deputy Minister Hoang Minh Son emphasized that in the context of economic difficulties, the Government set the goal of stabilizing the macro economy and controlling inflation. Therefore, not increasing tuition fees helps reduce the burden on people.

Regarding the concerns of universities after 3 consecutive years of not increasing tuition fees, Deputy Minister Son said that tuition fees are the main source of revenue for schools, accounting for 50-90% of revenue, and not increasing tuition fees in the 2023-2024 school year is a big challenge for schools.

Universities play a role in providing high-quality human resources, scientific and technological resources, and have the mission of implementing one of the three strategic breakthroughs. This is also a field that has been greatly affected in the past three years by the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues, and is under pressure from global competition.

Deputy Minister of Education and Training Hoang Minh Son.

On the other hand, tuition fee policies (Decree 60 and Decree 81) have not been implemented yet. Resources for higher education institutions have not increased for the past three years. In the context of rising prices, this is a big challenge to retain lecturers and teachers.

To support schools, the Ministry of Education and Training is making efforts to ensure regular spending on higher education, and has not yet implemented a roadmap for calculating the price of higher education services. The Ministry will also propose that the Government have a policy to support schools in the difficult context of not increasing tuition fees for 3 consecutive years, similar to supporting businesses.

The non-increase in tuition fees for the 2023-2024 school year will not have much impact or influence on general education, because this is not the main source of income for this level of education. General education is a welfare program, guaranteed by the State budget, so the Deputy Minister of Education and Training hopes that localities will pay more attention so that teachers can feel secure in their jobs, overcome and minimize the phenomenon of teachers quitting their jobs.

Previously, many universities complained about difficulties in balancing finances because for three consecutive years the Government required units not to increase tuition fees.

Not only that, the schools also stated that from July 1, the Government will increase the basic salary for cadres, civil servants, and lecturers to 1,800,000 VND/month, an increase of 20.8% compared to the previous basic salary of 1,490,000 VND/month. To meet the policy of increasing salaries for lecturers according to general regulations, schools must estimate that the budget will increase by several tens of billions of VND each year.

Tuition fees do not increase but salaries for lecturers and staff do, making the school budget increasingly tight.

To cope with this difficult situation, most schools decided to cut down on unnecessary activities, events, conferences, seminars... and reduce spending to maintain teaching and research activities, in which maintaining stable salaries for lecturers is the most important issue.

No tuition increase for 2023 - 2024
At a meeting on the draft amendment to Decree No. 81 of the Government on July 29, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha requested the Ministry of Education and Training to promptly complete the draft decree and submit it to the Government before August 8, 2023.
The Decree needs to be amended to clearly stipulate a number of provisions on the unimplemented and unapplied roadmap for the mechanism of collecting and managing tuition fees. In particular, the Deputy Prime Minister requested that tuition fees not be increased for the 2023-2024 school year.

Ha Cuong - English

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