» 10/27/2008 13:41 VIETNAM Education has become a means to make money, and Vietnam grows poorer by Thanh Thuy The lack of freedom of thought, the hunt for profit even in the field of education, and corruption are producing narrow-minded students without a firm foundation.
Ho Chi Minh City (AsiaNews) - Education in Vietnam has become a system for making money: there is no freedom of thought in the schools and universities, and the only concern is for making a profit, not for forming young people, and this is impoverishing the country.
Everyone is conditioned and guided by the policies of the communist party, so that the education system is taking on an important role of protecting the regime. The system has degenerated and creates "san pham dzom," bad results for the country. It even produces liars who are harming the country.
Many private schools and universities, and even state universities, are turning education into a business. The heads of educational institutions are looking at profits, and are forgetting or even defying the traditional values of Vietnamese culture. They are losing the tradition of student formation. “We are hired as 'useful' professors, but not as 'good' ones," says an economics professor at the Institute of Accounting and Business Management in Ho Chi Minh City. "We are able to teach and sell knowledge for their profits. The more they have students the more they have money. The leaders of the educational units can service the city because they have 'o du' – 'umbrella organization' from local authorities, and working for the city’s police office. So they are producing students who are not well educated. Even students of master of business administration and doctorate programs of business administration do not need to write thesis and dissertation when studying the training courses”.
The local authorities are corrupted by the educational system. They have allowed educational offices to turn their work into a business. Their education is all about doing business and making money. Teachers and students have no freedom of thought: everything is conditions and guided by government agents, by "education officials." Than, an English teacher at Open University in Ho Chi Minh City, tells AsiaNews, “Now the university is competitive with other ones. So the university runs follow advertisement and marketing with the lack of truthfulness. Viet Nam’s educational system from nursery schools to universities with persons who do business in education make advertisement by use of untrue words. Before 1975, Catholic universities, high schools and even elementary schools never did deceitful things like that. It is clear that education has declined and 'made a headache' for society with many bad phenomena such as imitation degrees, rote learning, theories but not practice, learning one way of ideological thinking.”
All of this impoverishes the country, with a poverty that is economic, moral, and educational, and allows no freedom of thought.
