Early admission: Inequality, system disorder

The Department of Higher Education ( Ministry of Education and Training ) believes that early admission makes candidates neglect their studies and is unfair. Many opinions say that schools are hoarding candidates.

Mr. Nguyen Manh Hung (Department of HigherEducation ) advises students and parents at the 2024 University and College Admissions Consulting Day in Ho Chi Minh City - Photo: TTD

On the afternoon of November 26, at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Ho Chi Minh City National University), the Department of Higher Education held a working session to listen to comments from universities on draft circulars related to determining enrollment targets and amending and supplementing a number of articles of the university enrollment regulations.

Many reasons for change

Sharing at the meeting, Mr. Nguyen Manh Hung (Department of Higher Education) said that the changes in the draft university admission regulations for 2025 stemmed from the unfairness of previous admissions as well as recent public opinion related to early admission.

According to Mr. Hung, schools using many early admission methods and multiple admission combinations cause unfairness and disorder in the general admission system. He also mentioned public opinion that early admission creates the feeling that schools are hoarding candidates. In addition, Mr. Hung also said that using international language certificates for early admission causes the whole society to compete for admission.

"The ministry's goal is to reduce this. The ministry plans to set general quotas, based on a common scale, to ensure fairness. The institutions that propose admission methods are responsible for converting the scores of the methods to the admission scale of the general admission round," said Mr. Hung.

More and more schools are organizing competency assessment exams and separate exams, and the results are used for admission. In previous years, schools organized exams and managed the results data, but this year the Ministry is expected to require the organizing units to provide the results to the Ministry for schools to use for admission.

Explaining this, Mr. Hung said that in previous years, there were many cases where the results of competency assessment tests and separate exams were used for admission but candidates were required to go to the school to get confirmation of results and submit them to the school.

"This causes inconvenience, wastes time for candidates, and causes frustration. Schools send results to the ministry so that schools can use them for admission, avoiding causing inconvenience to candidates. Exam organizing units must also adjust exam questions to closely follow the 2018 General Education Program," Mr. Hung added.

The Ministry of Education and Training has issued regulations to implement a basic principle in education, which is fairness, thereby improving the quality of enrollment and training, but absolutely does not create any barriers or have the purpose of forcing schools to use high school graduation exam scores for admission.

Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thu Thuy, Director of the Department of Higher Education (Ministry of Education and Training)

"Very harmful"

This is not the first time the Ministry of Education and Training has mentioned the unfairness in early admission and the use of too many admission methods. In many admission conferences, the ministry has mentioned this issue many times.

At the 2024 Higher Education Conference held in early August 2024, Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son said that universities have a high degree of autonomy in enrollment, but that does not mean they can do whatever they want, but they are autonomous within the framework of regulations. Early enrollment makes students neglect their studies, which is "very harmful."

According to Mr. Son, the fact that schools recruit using many methods makes the remaining quota for the high school graduation exam score method low, the standard score is very high, creating inequality in the opportunity to enter good universities. The Minister also suggested that universities should not have too many recruitment methods, the simpler the recruitment methods, the more convenient for students and society.

And the ministry's draft 2025 enrollment regulations with many changes are explained to aim at ensuring fairness for candidates. Ms. Nguyen Thu Thuy, Director of the Department of Higher Education, said that the draft revised circular focuses on overcoming shortcomings in the current enrollment work.

The fact that training institutions use many methods and subject combinations for admission to the same training program or major, including some training institutions allocating too many quotas for early admission, or setting too large bonus points for foreign language certificates.

Further explaining the inequality in determining the quota and early admission methods, Ms. Thuy said that there is hardly any scientific or practical basis for allocating quotas between admission methods or combinations of a training major, leading to problems such as unreasonable differences in admission scores between admission methods and subject combinations, while pushing the benchmark score of the admission method based on high school graduation exam scores up very high because the quota for this method is not much left, especially in "hot" majors and schools.

This causes unfair opportunities for candidates who do not have access to many admission methods.

Therefore, the draft amendment to the regulations stipulates the equivalent conversion of the scores of the admission methods and subject groups to a common scale. Training institutions will have to study to re-regulate the addition of points for foreign language certificates and other priority points, thereby limiting the abuse that causes inequality between candidates with different investment conditions for studying.

Guest lecturers are not counted in the quota.

Regarding the draft circular on determining enrollment targets, a representative of the Department of Higher Education said that the circular on determining enrollment targets was recently issued. However, in early 2024, the Ministry issued a circular on university education institution standards, so the content of the circular on determining targets must also be revised to unify the document.

According to the draft, the two main criteria for determining the quota are facilities and lecturers. Of which, the criteria for facilities are stable, while the criteria for lecturers have changed. The student/lecturer ratio is determined to be 40, an increase compared to before. However, only permanent lecturers working full-time are counted to determine the enrollment quota; guest lecturers are not counted.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/xet-tuyen-som-mat-cong-bang-roi-loan-he-thong-20241127091857329.htm