"To have high quality human resources, we must implement university autonomy"

On the morning of December 20, the Congress of the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges took place in Hanoi. The Association was established to contribute to the implementation of Resolution No. 29NQ/TW of the 8th Conference of the 11th Party Central Committee on Fundamental and Comprehensive Innovation of Education and Training. The Association was established to allow universities and colleges across the country to share experiences and issues that need to be resolved in higher education in particular and to improve the quality of education in the country in general.

Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam speaks at the Congress

Speaking at the Congress, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam emphasized: Currently, the competitiveness of Vietnam's economy compared to other countries in the region and the world is not high. Our country's labor productivity is still low compared to many countries. One of the reasons for this situation is that the level and skills of Vietnam's human resources are not high. Many organizations have conducted research when dividing human resources into 3 levels: Management and indirect work, high-tech, and manual labor. The results show that up to 80% of human resources working in management and indirect work do not have enough skills to work in an international competitive environment. More than 60% of engineers and people performing professional work are not skilled enough. The remaining 20% ​​of manual laborers are also not skilled enough. These statistics show the inadequacy of human resources trained at higher levels.

High-quality human resources are an important factor that determines the development of every country. If Vietnam wants to have high-quality human resources, it must narrow the quality gap compared to other countries and make breakthroughs in developing human resources that are competitive enough when integrating with the world.

In order to train high-quality human resources, one of the top tasks is that Vietnam needs to encourage many universities to participate in the stratification and ranking compared to other universities in the region as well as the world. This is to help the universities know where their training capacity is, and what breakthrough steps are needed to improve quality. The criteria for stratification and ranking of universities and colleges in Vietnam must also follow the world's basic evaluation criteria.

Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam emphasized that the mission of universities and colleges is to train high-quality human resources to serve social needs and integrate with the world. To carry out this mission, there is no other way but to implement University Autonomy.

The Government has just issued Resolution 77/NQ-CP on piloting the innovation of the operating mechanism for public higher education institutions. Accordingly, in 2014-2017, the pilot project on innovation of the operating mechanism will be implemented for 4 universities: National Economics University, Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics, Foreign Trade University and Hanoi University. This pilot innovation aims to achieve comprehensive autonomy for universities and colleges nationwide.

“In addition to the four schools that are piloting comprehensive autonomy, the Government encourages any universities that meet the conditions to submit a project to the Government for consideration. This is an action that needs to be widely promoted within the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges. Schools cannot use this or that reason to want to be subsidized by the State forever,” Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam emphasized.

The State budget for investment in universities and colleges is limited and cannot be subsidized forever, so if schools continue to rely on the budget, the quality of training cannot be improved. University autonomy does not mean that management will be loosened and there will be no policies for poor students. We will have policies to encourage poor students and they will all be supported when necessary.

In the near future, state agencies will implement the mechanism of “ordering” universities. If the subjects are students from policy families who need support, state agencies will “order” schools to support those subjects. In addition, if state agencies need to train any subjects or professions, the state needs to “order” universities to train them. Otherwise, universities must be financially autonomous and aim to account similarly to businesses. This is a big challenge but there is no choice for universities and colleges. In addition to financial autonomy, schools need to be academically autonomous.

Under the autonomy mechanism, universities and colleges should compete with each other in a healthy manner as well as cooperate and work together to overcome weaknesses and shortcomings to improve training quality. When implementing autonomy, schools should also accept the “elimination” mechanism./.

According to VOV