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Vietnam pipeline becomes a brain
drain
By Tran Dinh Thanh Lam
HO CHI MINH CITY - Le Thi Xuan has all her plans
neatly laid out, now that she has been admitted to the
National University of Singapore (NUS) in September.
But Singapore is just a stopover on Xuan's path
to getting an international college degree, her real
destination being an educational institution in the
United States. "After one or two years at NUS, I could
transfer to an American college or university that
recognizes this institution," Xuan said.
Like
many students here, Xuan wants to go abroad because of
the perceived better quality of education overseas, a
policy that the Vietnamese state has also encouraged for
more than a decade now.
But this policy may have
been too successful: officials are worried that too many
Vietnamese students are staying on abroad after their
studies, a brain drain whose impact on the country may
show soon. Whether Xuan returns to Vietnam at all after
her overseas studies, for instance, is a question mark
at this point.
Then there is Bui Hai Hung, who
earned his doctorate in Australia and has been working
as a lecturer at a university there for years while
continuing his research. He says that he will return to
Vietnam, but refuses to set a concrete date or year.
"Some day," he said.
"The opportunity of
studying overseas is now open for everybody," remarked
Professor Pham Sy Tien, head of the managing board of
overseas training under the Vietnamese Education
Ministry.
"It's good news," Dr Nguyen Ngoc Giao
of Ho Chi Minh City National University said of the fact
that more and more Vietnamese are going for higher
studies at institutions overseas. But "we don't know how
many of these students will come back home after their
graduation", he said in an interview.
Many
students decide to stay in the host countries, lured by
higher incomes and the chance to make good elsewhere.
Over the past decade, more than 15,000 Vietnamese
students have been sent by their parents to receive an
education abroad, the majority of them studying business
administration, information technology, tourism and
foreign languages.
By 2005, the number of
self-funded overseas students may rise to 20,000,
according to the Ministry of Education and Training. In
truth, the ministry does not know exactly how many of
the students who went overseas have returned home,
Deputy Minister Tran Van Nhung admitted.
"Most
of them would prefer to work in their country, but they
can't ignore the lucrative options available abroad,"
Giao said. The fact that Asian countries such as
Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are increasingly
adopting more flexible policies to attract students from
Vietnam has been a boon for those like Xuan.
After all, she had to make a "detour" in her
educational plans through Singapore, since she had
failed to get an education visa for the United States.
The interviewer at the US Consulate here feared
that she would stay on in the country illegally since
Xuan had relatives living there and doubted her family's
ability to fund her studies. "One or two years at NUS
will spare me all these troubles," explained Xuan.
To get overseas students, other Asian countries
are not as rigid as the US government in their
requirements - Xuan did not have to prove her family's
financial capacity or promise to return to Vietnam when
she graduates. All she had to do was to prove that she
was a very good student and had US$10,000 in her bank
account.
"You could have the same education
quality [as in the US], but at [lower] cost," Xuan said.
"You could also do some part-time jobs to earn extra
pocket money."
The trend is continuing now that
many Vietnamese do not need to go the US or the West to
take up their studies, and find going to Asian countries
cheaper. International students in the US pay from
$16,750-$27,250 in tuition, boarding and transport per
year, compared with an annual package of $7,500 in
Singapore.
In Singapore, too, international
students who study well can even get study loans or full
scholarships and are allowed to stay and work in the
city-state for three or four years after graduation.
Education experts agree that the root of the
problem appears to be the obsolete and backward
education system in Vietnam, which is far from enough
from what the country needs at a time of robust economic
growth.
"We will never have a skilled workforce
as long as our universities and colleges are poorly
managed and have such poor teaching standards," said
Giao.
Vietnamese educators say that while the
number of graduates staying overseas is likely to be
still small compared with the outflows from India and
China in the 1990s, it will become a brain drain if the
trend continues indefinitely. "The Vietnamese workforce
could suffer a crippling blow," one educator said.
"We must find new ways to ensure that overseas
students will return home after graduation," said Tien.
One of these ways is the state's offer of
scholarships to science and technology experts to polish
their doctorates overseas, then return to the country.
Each year, the Education Ministry offers
scholarships totaling VND100 billion ($64.5 million) to
young experts and technicians so that they can get
further training abroad. Since April 2000, some 1,704
people have benefited from this scheme, Tien said.
Tran Van Thuyen is one of 453 students who
received scholarships this year. "I decided to choose
networking, as the sector is rather new in Vietnam,"
Thuyen said. An information-technology graduate, he has
just passed an exam that entitles him to state-funded
overseas training.
The Education Ministry is
carrying out two other programs funded by Russia and the
US. Each year, 200 college graduates are sent to Russia.
A hundred are sent to the US under a project carried out
through the Vietnam Education Fund.
Good
students who cannot afford to study in foreign countries
can take part in "remote campus learning" programs,
which allow students to stay in Vietnam and follow the
programs of the foreign schools they select. Foreign
lecturers are invited to teach in Vietnam during the
course, and students need study abroad only during the
final academic year.
"The four-month term in the
United States was really useful because it was a great
opportunity for us to have direct contact with the MBA
program there," said an enthusiastic Vu Quang Thinh, who
followed the master of business administration course in
the National Economics University in cooperation with
Washington State University.
Asked whether he
had ever thought of staying on in the US afterward,
Thinh said, "All these things are only meaningful if I
stay in Vietnam."
(Inter Press Service)
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