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The director of the Ministry of Education and Training's Higher Education Department, Bui Anh Tuan,said that the recent suspension of new admissions for 207 university courses was aimed at increasing the quality of education.

Tuan said the ministry has decided to suspend new admissions for 207 university courses at 71 universities and other educational institutions because they did not meet their training requirements, especially concerning teacher shortages. The ministry will scrutinise colleges nationwide this year.

Bui Anh Tuan, Director of the Ministry of Education and Training’s Department of Higher Education

Was the scrutiny over universities and colleges made based on inspection results or reports sent by training institutions? Are such reports reliable?

Our efforts were based on reports from universities. However, it doesn’t mean that we fully trust them. We also assigned specialists to conduct practical assessments and supervision on the ground at universities. Several universities were compelled to revise their reports to make them more precise.

Public concerns have been raised over the fact that not only newly-founded universities but also veteran universities still lack lecturers for some of their core training fields. What are your comments about this?

The inspection was meant as something of a warning to universities about the shortage problem. We wanted to urge them to make plans to meet the training requirements in order to make strides in the quality of education in the country.

We’ve scrutinised all universities and institutes with due diligence paid to the quality and quantity of teaching staff.

Results have shown that it’s not true that courses with a long track record have enough lecturers, as several have retired or changed jobs. New regulations have also required universities to increase the quantity and quality of lecturers to meet new training requirements and demand.

The ministry decided to suspend to new admissions in 207 university training courses in 2014 at universities that failed to meet training requirements. However, the decision was made only two months before enrollment. Is there any possibility that some universities that don’t have enough time to fill out their staff could continue new admissions?

We want to give a warning and urge universities to pay due attention to the development of their teaching staff. We’ve gathered statistics on the number of core lecturers at universities and the ministry will make it public and require universities to update information about their teaching staff in order to achieve transparency.

Several lecturers registered to be core lecturers at different universities and the transparency is expected to help prevent such misconduct and control the real number of lecturers.

We’re resolved to apply strict measures and any universities that fail to meet requirements would be forced to suspend new admissions. Universities that take no measures to improve the situation would have their license being revoked and the information made public.

Should applicants to this year’s university entrance exam be worried if they register in fields that have had their courses suspended from taking new admissions?

Like I said before, any universities that take measures to improve the situation would be allowed to resume their enrollment.

Students should not be too worried, certain training course could always be organised by at some universities, and universities can always offer different courses. We’ll provide detailed information in this year guidebook on the university entrance exam.

Thank you very much!