A lot of new universities have opened, while the number of the lecturers with doctorates has not increased accordingly. Universities are really thirsty for the lecturers with high academic titles. Therefore, many bogus and false PhDs have appeared.
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Schools show lists of “virtual PhDs”
Deputy President of a junior college in Ho Chi Minh City which plans to be upgraded into a university, said that one could be easily fooled if he looks at the list of the lecturing staff of universities.
The lists may include a lot of lecturers with doctorate, but they are from other schools and their names have been “borrowed”. In many other cases, the names of the PhDs are just “bogus names” because the PhDs do not exist in reality.
People founded universities admitted that the key lecturers mostly come from state owned schools who give lectures under the hired labour contracts signed with the people founded schools. The Saigon Technique and Economics College publicly acknowledges this when it states in ad pieces that the teaching staff includes the professors, doctors, MAs, who are working for the Hanoi University of Technology, the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and the Ho Chi Minh City Economics University.
The economics-business administration of the school has 4000 students. Meanwhile, the list of lecturers shown on the official website of the school only includes 10 permanent people, including the ones whose names can be found in many different schools’ payrolls.
Where to find PhDs?
Under the new regulations, in order to open a new training branch, there must be at least one lecturer who has doctorate, and three lecturers with MA degree.
Tran Ai Cam, MA, Deputy President of the Nguyen Tat Thanh University, said that the school looked for 10 lecturers for every faculty of the school, but it was very difficult to find the lecturers with master or doctor degrees for finance and banking majors.
Tran Manh Thanh, Deputy President of the Bach Viet Junior College, said that all schools want to recruit qualified lecturers, while the number of lecturers with doctorate proves to be limited. Bach Viet is planning to provide a new faculty to train pharmacists, but it still has not found qualified lecturers for the faculty.
Meanwhile, Dr Nguyen Dinh Tuan, President of the Ho Chi Minh City University for Natural Resources and the Environment, said that meteorology proves to be the major for which it is most difficult to find doctors. Geology is also facing the same problem.
The list of the school’s lecturers for the information technology faculty includes 10 lecturers, but all of them are just post-graduates or following the training courses for master degrees.
Real degrees, false study
In order to get promotion, a lot of lecturers try to obtain doctorates, even though they do not spend any time on learning. The lecturers have real degrees, but do not have real knowledge.
Deputy President of a Ho Chi Minh City-based university said that a lot of Vietnamese lecturers now follow the training courses in Russia in order to obtain doctorate. However, the quality of the degrees provided by the Russian training establishments is really problematic.
The learners are not required to speak Russian nor English. They just have to fly to Russia and stay there for two weeks to discuss the themes for theses and then return to Vietnam, where they make scientific research for three years. During that time, Russian instructors come to Vietnam once a year and work with the learners through interpreters. After the three years, the learners have to spend 15 days in Russia to defense their theses.
A lot of Russian websites have become well known with the services of selling degrees. doconline.ru, for example, offers to sell all kinds of degrees, from bachelor degree to doctorate. A doctorate can be bought at 33,000 rubles, or 10,000 dollars.
Meanwhile, Dr Duong Anh Duc from the Ho Chi Minh City National University, said that a lot of unknown schools in the US have sent letters to offer to sell degrees to Vietnamese people.
