Educators urged to set up new order for consultancy firms

 Professor Pham Minh Hac, a well-known Vietnamese educator, said that the government needs to keep a keen eye on the consultancy firms, while the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) needs to be assigned the task of keep direct management over the firms.

Bring together as a whole

According to the professor, MOET has the right to decide which firms provide consultancy services, which ones organize education seminars and which foreign schools are allowed to teach in Vietnam. Especially, Vietnamese schools have to ask for the permission from MOET before they invite foreign schools to Vietnam.

In general, all the activities relating to the education and training must be brought back into unity and put under the control of MOET.

Professor Nguyen Van Hung, former President of the University for Civil Engineering, thinks that the Society of Study Encouragement of Vietnam needs to supervise the study consultancy activities. 

At present, there is only the Vietnam Overseas Study Consultancy Association which comprises of 20 consultancy firms. In fact, there has been no organization which supervises the study consultancy and gives advices to students and their parents.

“In many cases, parents try to send their children abroad just because this is the only good riddance, or because they think the degrees to be granted by foreign schools would be more honorable than domestic degrees,” Hung said.

“I know many students, who were expelled from school many years ago, but parents knew nothing about that,” he added.

Strict requirements need to be set up

Associate Professor Tran Xuan Nhi, Deputy Chair of VIECA, a study encouragement consultancy union, has pointed out that the loosened control is the main reason behind the chaotic study consultancy market.

Nhi believes that it’s necessary to set up standards and requirements that consultancy firms have to follow.

For example, directors of study consultancy firms should be the ones who once studied at foreign universities, traveled to many countries in the world and have good foreign language skills. Besides, the consultants need to experience training courses about consultancy. The firms also have to satisfy the requirements on material facilities and financial capability.

“Since there has been no standard for the firms to follow, even a small merchant can also come forward and set up a consultancy firm,” he said. 

“VIECA can help MOET find out the firms which can satisfy the requirements,” he suggested.

Students encouraged to follow foreign curriculums on the spot

It is estimated that the students studying overseas every year spend the sum of money equal to the rice export turnover. Therefore, the State should encourage students to follow foreign curriculums right in Vietnam, which allows them to save money, but still obtain the high standards of the universities in their host countries.

Nhi said that under the training model, foreign schools would send their teaching staff to Vietnam, where they organize training courses and grant degrees. The only disadvantage of the model is the less active English environment than that in foreign countries.

MOET has allowed some schools, including the Hanoi National University and the Hanoi University of Education to organize the training courses in accordance with foreign curriculums.

However, to date, there has been no mechanism that encourages schools to develop this training model.