Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Command Economy Works Again

Not.

HANOI, May 13 (Reuters) - About a year ago, 2,000 of the best and brightest from five of Vietnam’s top universities were invited to take a lengthy multiple-choice exam for a shot at a job at Intel Corp. (INTC.O).

The giant computer chip maker had broken ground on its biggest factory ever in Vietnam’s commercial hub, Ho Chi Minh City, and the $1 billion assembly and test facility, expected to start operations this year, needed good engineers.

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A fraction of the students passed the written exam, covering physics, electrical engineering, maths and other topics. They were given an English test and just 40 made the final cut.

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The higher education system remains a throwback to Vietnam’s pre-reform days when the economy was small and centralised, ill equipped for the country’s new realities.

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One huge problem is staff. Political credentials remain at least as important in the selection of professors as educational bona fides, despite a clear need for better qualified teachers.

Less than 15 percent of teaching staff at higher education institutes have a doctorate, and that percentage has not changed in the past 10 years, Waite said.

Schools have little autonomy to tailor curricula and students are rewarded for memorisation skills, not critical thinking.

[...]

The government has been drafting and re-drafting an education strategy to take it through to 2020, but it has faced criticism.

One former senior education official was quoted as calling a late draft “unbelievably romantic”. The start year keeps getting pushed back and it is unclear when the plan will be implemented.

The Ministry of Education and Training did not respond to requests for an interview with Reuters.

One critically needed change, some say, is the role of the central government, which must shift to one of broad oversight rather than micromanaging matters such as tenure appointments.

(1) Comments
Posted by Owen at 2238 hrs
Foreign Affairs

  1. Schools have little autonomy to tailor curricula and students are rewarded for memorisation skills, not critical thinking.

    This is common to all East Asian school systems and is an outgrowth of the historical Confucian educational systems. Yet, it did not hold South Korea and Taiwan back. The lack of English skills does not surprise. I taught English in Dalat as a volunteer for a few weeks this year. What impressed me was the high level of desire to learn English on the part of the students, and the low number of native English speaking teachers. This is probably the rule outside of both Saigon and Hanoi. The non-native speakers at my school spoke perfect English, but it was so heavily accented that many English speakers would have difficulty understanding them. Perhaps a written test would have bee easier, but I doubt it.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 13, 2009 at 1022 hrs


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