Vietnam’s current regulations on student enrolment have driven foreign students away from Vietnamese universities, according to Bui Van Ga, Minister of Education and Training.
The country is trying to enroll much more international students so that its universities will be better ranked on the world’s ladder, Ga said.
The number of international students is one of the criteria to rank universities in the world, he explained.
Bringing more foreign students to Vietnamese universities is also a way to introduce Vietnam’s education to the world, the minister added.
But the regulations have been preventing the number of international students at Vietnamese universities from growing, he complained, elaborating it is unfair to require foreign students to sit a Vietnamese admission exam when they come from another education system.
Otherwise, when a university wants to enroll a foreign student, it is required to use as benchmarks the results of an exam previously attended by the student that is similar to Vietnam’s admission tests.
This is also an obstacle to increasing the number of international students in Vietnam, he remarked.
Ga believed a large number of international students are studying in Vietnam now but he did not give a specific number.
He said last year Da Nang University where 500 Chinese and Lao students were attending at the time had to turn down a relatively high number of applications from foreign candidates owing to the regulations.
International students can also be found at many universities in Hanoi, Hue, Binh Dinh, and Ho Chi Minh City, he said.
* The Ministry of Education and Training is considering amendments to the current regulations on student enrolment at universities and junior colleges.
Foreign students accordingly will not have to attend Vietnam’s admission exams. Their academic performance in high school will be used instead to grant admission. A Vietnamese language test will be taken by those students beforehand.
* Schools’ presidents will be entitled to decide whether to accept an international student based on his/her academic records.
Those students will have to study and take exams in the same way as their Vietnamese peers.
