Should officials "race" to become professors?

A new Associate Professor receives a certificate of title at a ceremony. Photo: Nguyen Khanh

The question is: should officials "race" to do it?professor, associate professor (Professor, Associate Professor)? The answer from experts when sharing with Tuoi Tre is "no".

Each job position has its own characteristics. In the current conditions, to fulfill the duties and responsibilities of a civil servant is not easy.

In many fields - especially education and health - there are still too many social problems and people have expectations and concerns, but are often criticized and blamed...

I think all civil servants in these two sectors should focus on doing their jobs well so that people don't complain, that's already valuable. They shouldn't delay their main tasks because of false reputation, and do secondary tasks just for "pretending", and also violate the Civil Service Law by "wasting" time doing tasks not assigned by superiors.

The recent review of professor and associate professor profiles, especially selecting managers as one of the subjects that must be "carefully" considered, is certainly a lesson for many people.

As an administrative official, it is not advisable to rush into becoming a professor or associate professor. Because a professor must be a leader in science, pursuing new research directions, training talents for the country...

Therefore, in the upcoming revised regulations, it is necessary to specify more clearly the functions, tasks, and responsibilities of professors and associate professors. It is also necessary to stipulate that administrative officials should not become professors or associate professors in order to focus on fulfilling their duties as civil servants.

I went on business trips and studied the experiences of several countries and found that most of the titles of Professor are only for those working in training institutions. It is almost impossible for officials working in state management to be awarded the title of Professor.

But in Vietnam, the titles of Professor and Associate Professor are also held by those who work in administrative work, unrelated to teaching and research. This is not in line with the general trend of the world that Professors must be associated with training and research institutions and truly contribute to teaching and research.

In many countries, the titles of Professor and Associate Professor are decided by the training institutions, because they clearly understand the quality of the candidates. In our country, the approval and recognition of the titles of Professor and Associate Professor are mainly decided by the industry, interdisciplinary councils, and state councils. There is little understanding of the candidates, or even no one knows who they are, so it is very difficult to honor them accurately.

It must also be said that in other countries, Professor is not a permanent title. People who have stopped teaching or doing research may no longer be honored as Professors. In our country, the title of Professor is naturally recognized for the rest of one's life.

In my opinion, it's time to change, especially the related regulations so that officials don't chase after this title anymore.

If state management officials focus on research, where will they find time to do management work? If they are too absorbed in research, they will only become bad managers.

For example, there is a minister who, when he was the director of a research institute, may have had many scientific works, but when he took on the position of minister, where would he find time to do scientific research?

Looking at the list of many research achievements, how many graduate students have been supervised, how many places have they taught, it is very possible that it is just a formality. Or if they have real passion and real contributions, they are just bad managers, because where do they get the time and enthusiasm for all that?

So what does the title of Professor mean to a manager? This situation only exists in Vietnam, but in other countries, what is the purpose of an official being a Professor? A Professor must have made a specific contribution to the university.

It's time to end the type of professor who doesn't contribute anything to the school or to science, but is just a title that brings benefits to the person being recognized.

Ngoc Ha