There will be a roadmap to calculate correct and full tuition fees for public universities.

The workshop “Innovation of financial mechanism for public higher education institutions” was organized by the Ministry of Finance, the United Nations in Vietnam and the Financial Policy Analysis Support Project this morning, November 29, in Hanoi. Many universities across the country participated and presented their concerns about public university tuition fees.

Professor Hoang Van Chau, Principal of Foreign Trade University, and Professor Ngo The Chi, Director of the Academy of Finance, both "complained" about the difficulties of financial autonomy, causing difficulties for the operations of public universities.

Students pay tuition fees for the 2011-2012 school year at Ton Duc Thang University.
Photo: TS

“Financial autonomy in reality cannot be implemented because it is not synchronized with other autonomy such as in management, staff recruitment, international cooperation... Specifically, personnel recruitment must go through the Ministry in charge while the educational institution is the one that knows the professional qualifications. In education today, there are expenses that are not included in the revenue list,” said Professor Chau. Therefore, most schools “demand” more complete autonomy, especially in deciding on enrollment and tuition fees. “The revenue and expenditure levels are too outdated, so no matter how much autonomy is granted, it cannot be implemented,” emphasized Professor Ngo The Chi.

At the workshop, representatives of the Ministry of Finance agreed that to solve the financial problem in schools, first of all, tuition fees must be calculated correctly and fully. Nguyen Truong Giang, Department of Administrative Affairs, Ministry of Finance, said that tuition fees are an important source of income, the main financial resource to maintain school operations. However, in our country, tuition fees only cover a part of the necessary costs to provide university training services. Therefore, it has not created conditions for higher education to develop, affecting the quality of higher education.

According to Deputy Minister of Finance Nguyen Thi Minh, the financial mechanism for public universities still has many shortcomings and must be reformed to meet the requirements of socio-economic development as well as the requirements of human resource training. Therefore, the Ministry will accept opinions to have a mechanism to reform public university finance, in accordance with the requirements of fundamental and comprehensive reform of education. It is expected that in December 2011, the Ministry of Finance will submit to the Government the content of reforming public educational institutions' finance.

* On November 29, FPT University announced that on April 8, 2012, FPT University will organize a preliminary exam for 7 training majors in 2 majors: Information Technology - Electronics - Telecommunications and Business Administration - Banking and Finance in three areas: Hanoi, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City. From now until December 15, 2011, candidates can submit their application to receive many supports from FPT University under the program "Opportunities for Pioneers".

In particular, this year, students participating in the "2012 Credit Incentive" program of FPT University will be able to borrow tuition fees in the form of unsecured loans (no need to mortgage assets), repaying the debt after graduation, with a special preferential interest rate, only equal to the interest rate of savings mobilized at banks.

This large financial support is taken from the budget of FPT University to support poor candidates with difficult circumstances. In addition, in 2012, FPT University continued to implement a full scholarship fund named after the late Professor, Academician Nguyen Van Dao as well as offering many full and partial scholarships to candidates with high results in the school's entrance exams, or candidates who have achieved results in national and international Olympic competitions.

(According to SGGP)