A Korean language class at Van Hien University located in Ho Chi Minh City.

The Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) has recently unveiled a circular stipulating that enrollments in higher education institutions must be proportionate to their own campus size and number of full-time faculty members.

The Hanoi-based Banking Academy has accordingly doubled its annual recruitment of new lecturers to 70-80, according to Dr Tran Manh Dung, the academic affairs office chief.

Dr Dung says the MoET has warned it would enforce strict punishment on rule violators, so the school must look for more full-time lecturers, because half of its faculty members are visiting ones.

An official at Thang Long University, also located in the capital, reveals it will take on 100 more lecturers in the near future.

Nguyen Tat Thanh University, in Ho Chi Minh City, says it is seeking 150 new lecturers as the school management wants to admit more students in years ahead.

Ngo Thi My Lan, vice chief of academic affairs at the HCM City-based Hoa Sen University, told Tuoi Tre the school will recruit more to comply with the new requirements.

In the same fashion, Hung Vuong University in HCM City says it is going to employ around 30 more lecturers to staff its faculties.

Vo Van Tuan, academic affairs chief at Van Lang University, which is based in the same southern city, says his school needs 80 more lecturers to ensure that it is able to enroll as many students as last year.

The schools are, at the same time, grappling with the other part of the regulations.

Ngo Thi My Lan, of Hoa Sen University, says that her school is building two new campuses in Districts 1 and 12, but adds that they won’t be finished for two more years.

“We have had to lease extra teaching space so far,” Lan admits.

Hung Vuong also does not own an appropriate amount of teaching space as required by the ministry, Nguyen Thi Mai Binh, the school’s academic affairs chief, confesses, adding it has had to lease additional spaces around the city.


The school is having problems with the land banks for its campus expansion, so it will persuade the education watchdog to waive the campus size rule for one year, Binh says.

Dr Hung, Nguyen Tat Thanh president, says his school also suffers from the same issue.

“We will construct makeshift lecture halls while waiting for new campuses to be put up.”

MoET demands in the circular that a college lecturer teach no more than 25 students, and that the minimum campus area per capita be 2 square meters.

It has recently banned three Vietnamese universities from enrolling new students for the next school year which starts in September, because they severely breached its regulations on campus sizes and faculty members.

The bans followed its sudden crackdown on enrollment at higher education levels after years of lax control.

For years, local experts have argued that quality is sacrificed at many universities, which are trying to admit as many students as they can simply to reap profit.