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VietNamNet Bridge – Non-full time university education modes have become more and more popular in the world, because they allow people to follow studies in flexible way. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, non-full time training has been filled with scorn.

It is estimated that more than 40 percent of students nowadays are following in-service training courses. That explains why the decision by some provincial authorities to refuse in-service training graduates has vexed so many people.

In the thoughts of Vietnamese people, only those who fail the university entrance exams to follow full-time training, would have to study at in-service training courses to obtain university degrees. Therefore, the graduates of in-service training are believed as having lower qualifications than full-time training graduates.

In principle, the degree granted to in-service training graduates has the same value with the degree granted to full-time training graduates. However, some provinces still have ignored the current laws, stated that they will not recruit in-service graduates for their state agencies.

Nguyen Van Khoat, Director of the Ha Nam Education and Training Department, one of the localities that say “no” to in-service graduates, explained that the department has to set up specific requirements to ensure that it can find the best and most suitable officers for the schools in the province.

However, Khoat has affirmed that Nam Dinh does not say “no” to non-full time training, saying that it’s necessary to find out reasonable recruitment methods, which allow to bring opportunities to many candidates and find out the most capable ones.

In-service training goes the wrong way

According to Professor Lam Quang Thiep, Vietnam should not follow the idea that it would be better to remove non-full time training modes, because the modes can help people approach to university education to have better knowledge. 

Thiep said the problem of in-service training now is that it has been going the wrong way. Therefore, the thing that needs to be done is to choose a right way to follow, not to think of removing the training mode from the national training system.

The blunder of the in-service training, according to Thiep, is that the teaching technology applied for full-time training has also been applied for in-service training as well, while the latter needs a specific technology.

Non-full time training courses mostly have special targeted students. The learners of the courses need to spend time on self-learning. Therefore, the curriculums need to be designed to fit the self-learners. However, the requirement has not been met so far.

Therefore, in order to improve the quality of in-service training, it is necessary to design reasonable curriculums, prepare good materials for students. It is also necessary to apply a new method in assessing the students’ learning capability.

Commenting about open universities, the main non-full time training service providers, Professor Thiep said that the “open schools” are now operating as “closed schools.” In Vietnam, the Hanoi and HCM City Open Universities are the biggest schools which undertake the duties of providing distance training courses.

In principle, open universities need to be equipped well with modern technologies to provide lessons to learners who do not go to class every day. However, since the two schools do not have necessary technical equipment and reasonable technologies fitting the open education mode, they have become the “closed schools.”

Director of the University Education Department of the Ministry of Education and Training Bui Anh Tuan has said that a conference on education renovation would be organized in October or November, where how to improve in-service training quality would be discussed.

Nguyen Huong