Ministry, schools ignore human resource development strategy

Ministry, schools ignore human resource development strategy

VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has requested universities to report the enrolment target for 2012 based on the schools’ training capability. 

The “schools’ training capability”, according to MOET, can be considered in the two factors – the teaching staff and the material facilities. It’s quite a surprise that MOET and universities do not set up enrolment plans based on the human resource development strategy for 2011-2020 which was approved by the Prime Minister in July 2011.

Under the strategy, in the next 10 years, Vietnam would have 30.5 million trained workers, accounting for 55 percent of the total 55 million workers in the national economy. The figure is expected to increase to 44 million by 2020, accounting for 70 percent of the 63 million workers in the national economy.

The total investment capital for the human resource development is estimated to reach 2135 trillion dong, or 12 percent of the total investment capital of the whole society.

Regarding the human resource demand in different sectors, the strategy points out that the number of workers in the industrial and construction sector would increase from 10.8 million in 2010 (22 percent) to 15 million by 2015 (27 percent) and 20 million by 2020 (31 percent). In the service sector, the number of workers would rise from 13 million in 2010 (26.8 percent) to 15-16 million by 2015 and 17-19 million by 2020 (27-29 percent). In agriculture, forestry and fisheries, the figures would be 24.9 million in 2010, 24-25 million by 2015 and 22-24 million by 2020.

Quality – the immediate goal

A former high ranking official of MOET said that once the strategy was approved, the enrolment plans need to be set up in the way to satisfy the requirements in the strategy, including the quality and quantity for different majors and different regions.

In this case, schools themselves cannot set up concrete targets for different training branches. It would be better if a state management agency (possibly MOET or the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs) assigns training tasks to training establishments.

However, under the latest circular about the way of defining the enrolment targets released by MOET in December 2011, schools will still define the enrolment targets themselves based on their teaching staff and material facilities.

As such, the university training in Vietnam will still depend on the capability of the schools, not on the human resource development strategy and on the demand of the society.

How many students to enroll and which majors to enroll students for will still be decided by the schools themselves based on their experiences, not on any scientific and practical analysis works on the issue. As a result, the number of university graduates does not fit the labor demand of the market, resulting in the high percentage of unemployment.

Graduates of hot majors would still be unemployed?

According to Dr Le Thi Thanh Mai, Deputy Head of the University and Postgraduate Training Division of the HCM City National University, in 2011, Vietnam organized 300 majors at 475 training establishments.

Business and economics-relating majors saw the highest percentage of candidates (10.98 percent), followed by teacher training (9.31 percent), accountancy and auditing (9 percent), finance and banking (8.63 percent), civil engineering (4 percent), agriculture (4.02 percent), healthcare (3.41 percent)

Ngo The Chi, Director of the Finance Academy, said that to date, there has been no big scale survey about the employment of university graduates. He said that it is necessary to review the training and the demand of the society, or it would be a big waste to train the people who become unemployed.

Source: Lao dong