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Nguyen Van Long, an official from the Thanh Hoa Department of Education and Training believes that due to the scarcity of jobs, people are looking at other options rather than continuing tertiary education.

Many universities in the north have seen a sharp fall in the number of applications this year. Among those, universities in Thanh Hoa Province witnessed the highest drop with just 63,000 applications, down 16,000 compared to 2012.

Previously, many poor farmers would sell their paddy and poultry early or even used their land use certificates to get loans to send their children to university. However, more graduates, even masters are facing unemployment after graduating.

Many people are instead looking for alternatives.

“The market has defined other ways for their children future, not only studying at a university,” he added.

In previous years, teacher training attracted many students because graduates found it easy to find a school due to the serious teacher shortage, but now, graduates from this area face difficulties to find a job, resulting in a drop in the enrolments. Thanh Hoa also has unemployed teaching graduates.

Last year, dozens of students who won prizes at national contests were allowed to select the university they wanted to study at, but none of them chose teacher training.

He expressed his concerns about worsening education quality when schools are racing to attract students by offering different kinds of training. They are entitled to define their targets based on the number of lecturers.

In many localities, qualified people are facing difficulties finding work while those who have worse capacity but good relations with officials prosper, disappointing many people.

According to the official, in reality, many masters and university graduates have to work as porters and tailors. At many industrial parks, people have to hide their university degrees when applying for a job because many enterprises do not accept those who have a degree as they fear they would have to pay higher salaries.