Why do many top universities not recruit enough candidates?

After the first round of university admission ended, many top universities (with prestige and training quality) announced that they lacked enrollment targets and needed to supplement them in the next round of admission.

As the leading medical training school in the country, but at the end of the first round of admission, Hanoi Medical University announced additional admission for a number of majors. While the school's enrollment target is 1,100, at the end of the first round, the school only received 758 candidates confirming that they will study at the school. Especially this is the first year, the General Medicine major - a very "hot" major, usually meets the quota in the first round of admission, even in many years candidates with over 27 points still fail, this year there is still a shortage of quota.

Similarly, for the first time in many years, Hanoi University of Science and Technology did not recruit enough candidates from the first round, so the school has just announced to recruit nearly 800 additional positions for 26 training majors.

Not only lacking hundreds of enrollment targets, many top universities also lack thousands of candidates to study such as: University of Mining and Geology is lacking 2,055 targets; University of Commerce announced additional enrollment of 1,450 targets for 12 majors. The minimum score for receiving additional applications is 17, a decrease of 3 to 6 points compared to the standard score of the first round of the school (over 21 points in all majors)...

Candidates confirm their studies after applying for university admission.

Large number of virtual candidates

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Huu Tu, Vice Principal of Hanoi Medical University, said that in the first round of university admissions this year, each candidate can register for 2 universities, each university has 2 wishes, so the number of virtual candidates is relatively large.

In 2015, when the admission period was finalized, each candidate was only assigned to one school, but this year, when the registration period ended, candidates were still registered at two different schools. Therefore, it is difficult for universities to predict how many candidates will be admitted to their schools.

In addition, this year's exam has a high level of classification, so the score range is significantly lower, so this year's benchmark score should have been much lower than expected by the schools, but it was not.

Sharing the same view that the large number of virtual candidates makes it difficult for universities to determine the exact number of candidates admitted, Associate Professor Dr. Tran Van Top, Vice President of Hanoi University of Science and Technology, also commented that in the first round, candidates were allowed to register for 2 universities, each with 2 wishes, so many students with high scores registered for Hanoi University of Science and Technology as only their second wish, while the first wish, most of them registered for public security and military universities. Because these are schools where, when entering, candidates do not have to pay tuition fees and are guaranteed to have a job after graduating from university.

While the enrollment target of the University of Mining and Geology is 4,470, but after the first round, the school reported that it was still short of 2,055 targets.

Limited awareness of the field of study

This year, right from the first admission round, many universities did not meet their enrollment targets and had to announce additional enrollment. The number of candidates applying for traditional majors at many universities has tended to decrease. One of the reasons for the low number of applicants is that students do not have enough awareness about these majors.

In addition, the career orientation of students while in high school is not complete. They do not clearly understand what the nature of the work will be like when studying a certain profession, what fields they will work in after graduation, and what the income level will be.

Some "hot" majors such as: Automation, information technology, electronic engineering, economics that are of interest to candidates and have a large number of applications are all consulted by their families before applying.

The fact that candidates rush to register for some majors that are considered “hot” today shows that they do not understand correctly and lack information from schools and society about the professions. This makes candidates misunderstand when registering for university admission and will lead to some majors having a team of good bachelors but many other majors have very little or no information.

Candidates see the list of majors at the University of Transport

Solving the problem of training quality and targets

According to education experts, to accurately assess university enrollment, we must wait until the end of the second round of enrollment and see that schools are still short of thousands of quotas, then it is a real warning.

If after the university entrance exam rounds, many schools still lack thousands of enrollment targets, especially traditional majors that cannot recruit candidates, then the faculties training in these majors need to reconsider their ability to meet the needs of society.

Mr. Nguyen Thi Phuong affirmed that universities, faculties and departments all want to attract candidates. However, the pressure on schools is to be financially autonomous. If they increase tuition fees, they will face negative reactions from society, and if they increase training quotas, quality will be difficult to ensure. Therefore, financial autonomy must be the final step in the autonomy process of a university. What universities need to do when they want to attract candidates is to be academically autonomous, improve the quality of training, scientific research and social criticism.

According to VOV