Nation's universities lack qualified lecturers

Hanoi (VNA) - As the country suffers from a shortage of qualified
professors, a recent proposal by the Department of Science and Technology
under the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) to allow only associate
professors and professors as guest lecturers has puzzled university leaders.

"The proposal will be difficult for many universities as the number of
professors and associate professors who can give lectures is very small,
said Pham Tan Ha, vice head of the Training Department of HCM City Social
Sciences and Humanities University .

According to statistics from the National Title Council, number of
professors in the country is smaller than that of universities. Of 369
universities and colleges with more than 1.6 million students, there are
more than 56,000 lecturers, of which only 314 are professors and 1,845 are
associate professors.

This makes the ratio of students to professors or associate professors 743
to one.

The proposal also required that lecturers be scholastic published authors.

"Every university, both public and private, will have difficulties finding
qualified professors or associate professors to give lectures," said Vu Khac
Chuong, rector of the Sai Gon Culture, Arts and Tourism College in HCM
City .
"We dont' know how we can find enough lecturers who are professors
or associate professors,"

Nguyen Van Mung, head of the Training Department of Tay Do University in
HCM City , said that his university had only three professors who can
teach each term.

"We would face great difficulty if the proposal is approved," said Mung.

Explaining the proposal, Ta Duc Thinh, head of the MoET's Department of
Science and Technology, said that it was made to improve the quality of
teaching in universities and colleges.

"Many have complained that lecturers at universities are poorly qualified,
thus the quality of teaching is low," said Thinh.

He said, however, that the department would make amendments after receiving
public input.

The quality of professors and associate professors has been a controversial
issue for years, with many saying that professors in the country are not as
highly qualified as their title requires them to be.

"The process to nominate professorship and associate professorship is not
substantial. The evaluation process has not been done properly," said Hoang
Xuan Sinh , Vietnam 's first female professor and doctor in mathematics.

"I think it's because many leaders still look only at titles rather than
actual abilities."

Professor in Science and Law, Dr Nguyen Van Nam, LLM, said the proposal was
a good move to improve the quality of teaching, but to some extent it has
created an odd conflict.

"Why must only guest lecturers be professors or associate professors, what
about lecturers working full-time at universities? Does that mean guest
lecturers need a higher educational background and title than primary
lecturers?"

Nam noted that the proposal could mean that talented and outstanding
people without professorship would not be able to contribute to the
educational sector.

Do Tran Cat, General Secretary of the National Title Council, had previously
admitted that there were some cases of people accused with producing
counterfeit documents to be nominated for professorship or associate
professorship.

"But we didn't have enough evidence to prove they were false documents,"
said Cat.

The MoET targets qualifying 20,000 doctors by 2020, with 10,000 trained in
the country and the rest abroad.

Currently, the rate of doctors teaching in universities is 14.7 percent,
while in colleges it is 1.4 percent.

The ministry targets by 2020 to raise those figures to 20 percent in
universities and 5 percent in colleges, according to Tran Thi Ha, head of
the Department of Undergraduate and Postgraduate Training.-Enditem