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The NA Committee of Culture, Education, Youth and Children made the announcement in a report, which was drafted after a review of the implementation of NA’s resolutions on tertiary education.

A working group of the committee inspected 50 out of 419 educational institutions at the tertiary level across the country. The inspection was held from July to December last year, the results of which came in the form of reports from ministries, related branches as well as 264 educational institutions.

Dao Trong Thi, Chairman of the committee said that over the past recent three years the country has seen considerable progress in tertiary education, but several inadequacies remain to be dealt with.

“The rate of establishment of new universities and colleges has been quite high, resulting in rapid growth of the tertiary education network between 2010 and 2011, but there have been few changes in terms of planning for these institutions," Thi said.

He added that the locations of such institutions had become a problem, with many choosing to establish themselves in favourable locations, leaving less-advantaged areas lacking.

Another major problem which he pointed out, having to do with planning, was that many educational facilities have made promises to revamp procedures for human resource development at the ministerial, branch and local level in line with the Strategy and Plan for Vietnam's Human Resource Development for the 2011 - 2020 period; however few institutions have lived up to their promises. Many institutions, especially private schools, are finding it difficult to recruit qualified teachers, he said.

Enrollment has also proven to be a problem. Because of a shortage of qualified candidates, many institutions have lowered their acceptance standards, he added.

In addition, many non-state institutions opt to focus on sectors that do not require much investment in technology and infrastructure, such as business administration, banking, finance, and foreign languages.

The committee proposed that the government close substandard institutions and more closely scrutinise the plans for tertiary education institutions nationwide. They also suggested that state-run educational institutions be located in the places with the most demand in order to avoid redundancies and waste of investment.

Another major recommendation was that the Ministry of Education encourages schools to direct more efforts to soliciting investment from the private sector in order to enhance the quality of staff as well as focus training in practical directions.