Vietnamese prize education, and are willing to spend billions of USD sending their children overseas to school, but the country lacks even a basic university system of its own to nurture its own teachers, a leading academic has said.

Professor Ngo Bao Chau, who won the Fields medal in 2010, said tertiary education in Vietnam was the worst among eduction levels in the country, adding it was unacceptable that people had to send their children abroad to get an education.

Professor Ngo Bao Chau 

He said that while there had been progress in education for children, such the shift away from the traditional marks-based system so teachers could more directly address the needs of first graders, and there had been positive changes in compiling curriculums and textbooks, the country needed to put higher education at the centre of any academic reform process.

Chau said tertiary education was substandard, mainly because of incompetent teachers and managers, and a lack of funding.

“While Vietnamese closely care for their children’s study at the basic education level, it seems to be out of their reach when their children enter higher education," Chau said. Parents ended up having to finance the education of their children at upper levels, rather than it being a state responsibility.

He said education reform was hard to achieve in the short-term, but the public needed to be aware of the need for reform and engage in active debate so there could be agreement about what the country wants and needs.

It should not be left to the government to decide, but should be supported by the whole of society, and to that end weaknesses and strengths should be examined, along with how the system could be improved.

"In-service and distance training has become a growing issue of tertiary education that seriously affects training quality," Chau said, "The Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) should only faciliate the development of standard training insitutions and strictly deal with those with bad quality.

“I do think that it’s a good idea to allow universities to be financially self-governing. However, they still continue to need support from state budget to ensure their survival. It's irrational to lower state budget funding, but ban univerisities from raising tuition fees, forcing them to struggle to survive.”

Chau said higher education needs more support from communities recognising the key role higher education plays in Vietnam's development.

He said the MoET’s plan to train 20,000 doctorates as part of the effort to intensify tertiary education quality was to be commended.

“This is a good policy as world-class universities only employ lecturers with doctorates, instead of relying on university graduates as in Vietnam. More attention should be paid to the quality of docterate training in this country,” Chau said.