A lecturer instructs students at the Civil Law Department in HCM City Law University (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNS/VNA) -Lack of funding is a serious obstacle for lecturers doing research atuniversities in Vietnam.
The Ministry of Education and Training requires university lecturers to spendat least one third of their working time on conducting research.
However, lecturers are struggling to afford both teaching and research,the Thanh nien (Young People) newspaper reported.
The newspaper said the ministry regulated that every university lecturer had todeliver 270 lectures per year. If they do more, they will receive an extraallowance, but the number of extra lectures cannot be more than 200 ayear.
Associate Professor Hoang Minh Son, principle of the Hanoi University ofScience and Technology, said payment for an extra lecture should be 50 percentto double the payment for a normal lecture, according to Ministry of Labourregulations.
However, if lecturers followed the Labour Ministry’s regulations, universitieswould not have enough money to pay them, Son said.
So, universities allow the rate for extra lecturers to be set by themselves,commonly 60,000–80,000 VND.
Professor Do Duc Thai, head of the Mathematics Department under the HanoiTeacher Training University said that a PhD holder at the university had amonthly official income of only about 8 million VND. They found it hard toincrease their incomes because of busy teaching schedules, Thai said.
Professor Nguyen Van Son, principal of the Medical School at the Thai NguyenUniversity, said that post-graduates working at the university earned about 6million VND monthly.
Son said the university was worried about holding on to qualified lecturers,especially when sending them to attend higher education.
A former lecturer at the university moved to work for a hospital in Hanoi andgot a monthly salary of 40 million VND.
Because of modest fixed salaries, many lecturers tried to work extra or deliverextra lectures to get more money. This also cost them time and work.
Once the lecturers failed to complete a research assignment, they did otheractivities, such as compiling studying materials for students or attendingtraining workshops.
In some cases, teaching hours were converted into researching hours with rate1:3, Thanh nien reported.
Dr Hoang Ngoc Vinh, former senior official of the Ministry of Education andTraining, told Vietnamnet.vn last month that conducting research inuniversities was for many purposes, including to improve training quality andprestige at the universities, to serve demands of socio-economic development,promote connectivity and cooperation with other universities and researchinstitutions or with companies.
In Vietnam, few universities had succeeded in their research endeavours whileothers’ faced many limitations, Vinh said.
For example, research topics are so outdated compared with those across theworld, particularly in fields of economics, education and social sciences.
There are few research projects on applicable technologies or research productsto meet practical needs, so it’s difficult to call for funding.
Technology transfer was also not effective because transferers and transfereedid not meet each other.
Vinh said lecturers at Vietnamese universities did not have proper foreignlanguage competence, research methods or skills on writing reports, analysis orpresentation. He noted that lecturers preferred teaching to conductingresearch.
A linguistic lecturer at a university in Hanoi told Vietnam News thatshe was always battling to afford teaching and improving her expertise andknowledge, let alone obligations to family.
She said that to promote herself and gain trust from students, she usually“showed off” to her students that she had graduated from a prestigious overseasuniversity and held a PhD, but after that, she felt ashamed of herself.
“I’m usually exhausted after school because of the busy teaching schedule,” shesaid, adding that she had little time for reading or learning new things whileknowledge that she gained previously began to fade.
“I’m very confused. I wish I could be brave enough to decide which is mypriority now: teaching to get money, doing research, fulfilling familyobligations or improving heath,” she said.
One of her friends suggested her that to fulfill all tasks, she should sleeponly three hours a day.
Universities and lecturers in Vietnam are still struggling to find how topromote research and stop lecturers from becoming teaching machines.-VNS/VNA
VNA
