"Inflation" of diplomas

(Baonghean) - The recruitment process for civil servants and public employees under the attraction program as stipulated in Decision 57 of the Provincial People's Committee is currently underway. According to the Provincial People's Committee's announcement, this year 70 units have registered for the attraction program (for the period 2014-2018) with 416 staffing quotas for 307 positions across 167 sectors and specialties.

After the list of job openings was published in the media, hundreds of students with good or excellent academic records applied to the organizations that had vacancies. The number of applications received far exceeded the number of available positions. It wasn't just recent graduates with good or excellent degrees seeking employment; many talented bachelors, masters, and postgraduate students who were unemployed also sought out these job openings hoping for stable employment.

The province's policy to attract high-quality human resources applies to many groups, with the largest group being university graduates with good or excellent grades. In previous years, the recruitment standard only required a good or excellent university or college degree, with priority points awarded through entrance exams. This year, in accordance with Decision 57 of the Provincial People's Committee, students with excellent degrees (regular programs) do not have to take entrance exams but are directly admitted based on three criteria: university entrance exam score, average GPA, and thesis or graduation exam score. These three scores are added together and multiplied by a coefficient, ranking applicants from highest to lowest until all quotas are filled.

With the above mechanism, the admissions process is "put on the table" openly and transparently, leaving no loopholes for exploitation. However, its practical application still faces some difficulties. With the previous "three common subjects" method for university and college admissions (maintaining a minimum score), the university entrance exam score was a fairly accurate reflection of the quality of incoming students. Candidates with high university entrance exam scores were usually trained at prestigious universities. But from this year, university and college admissions have abandoned the "three common subjects" method. Universities have the resources to organize their own entrance exams, and the passing scores vary from university to university. Therefore, in the coming years, university entrance exam scores cannot be used as a criterion for selecting high-quality human resources.

The average GPA throughout university years and the grade on the graduation thesis are two important criteria for accurately assessing a student's abilities upon graduation. However, the level of these two grades varies greatly between universities and colleges. In prestigious institutions with high-quality training, achieving high grades on academics and graduation theses is very difficult; even obtaining a distinction degree from these institutions is not easy. Conversely, in universities and colleges with lower-quality training, achieving high grades on academics and graduation theses is often easier, not to mention the practice of buying grades, which results in many universities and colleges having extremely high percentages of students graduating with good or excellent grades.

According to many students, achieving high GPA and thesis scores used to be very difficult due to the strict grading system at universities. However, over time, universities have tended to relax their grading criteria, resulting in a lower quality of graduates with good or excellent grades compared to the past. Meanwhile, these students have an advantage over previous generations because of their higher scores, even though their actual abilities may not match those of their predecessors. Furthermore, many graduates with excellent grades and practical experience are still not given priority in recruitment.

Alarmingly, as localities nationwide prioritize university degrees with good or excellent grades in the recruitment of civil servants and public employees, a trend of "buying" excellent degrees has emerged in many universities. Meanwhile, due to the lack of improvement in the quality of higher education, the value of these degrees is gradually diminishing. It's not surprising that in some universities and colleges, nearly half of the graduating class has a good or excellent degree. Although Decision 57 of the Provincial People's Committee has specific regulations to select truly capable students, the "inflation" of excellent degrees makes it very difficult to accurately recruit talented individuals from recent graduates. This is a challenge in implementing the province's policy of attracting high-quality human resources, and relevant agencies need to continue researching and summarizing practical experiences to find solutions.

TRAN HONG CO