Some students might not be able to attend their dream university due to increases in tuition fees. (Photo: nld.com.vn) Even though the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) has written a proposal to keep the tuition fee unchanged between the 2021 and 2022 school years, many universities have announced multiple price hikes.
HCM City University of Law is one of the schools with the highest tuition fees next school year.
According to the school's announcement, the lowest tuition fee for Course 47 applied from the academic year 2022-23 to 2025-26 for general programmes of law, international commercial law and business administration is 151 million VND (6,455 USD).
The tuition fee for remaining general majors range from 179 million VND to 205 million VND per course.
For high-quality programmes of administration and law, a student would have to spend 358 million VND per course.
The highest tuition fee will be 766 million VND per course for a high-quality law programme, taught in English.
The Hanoi Law University is also expected to charge a higher tuition fee compared to the previous school year.
During the 2022-23 academic year, the tuition fee for a general training programme is 2 million VND per month, more than double the 980,000 VND fee in the 2021-22 school year.
Meanwhile, tuition for a high-quality training programme is 5 million VND, an increase of 65% compared to 3 million VND in the pervious school year.
For the next school year, the Academy of Journalism and Communication charges tuition by credit.
Except for the training of political theory lecturers, the tuition fee for general progammes is expected to be 440,000 VND per credit while that of the high-quality programmes is 1.32 million VND per credit.
This is an increase of nearly 60% and more than 70%, respectively, compared to the tuition fees last school year.
Nguyen Ninh Thuỵ, head of the Financial Planning Department of the HCM City National University (VNU-HCM), admitted that when public universities increase tuition fees autonomously, it may lead to a reduction in the chances of poor students to go to school.
This will slow down the process of expanding the scale of human resources training at university level.
Thuỵ added that the increase in tuition fees also affects people’s tendency to go for basic science programmes, which play a crucial role in the country's sustainable development orientation.
Students will be less likely to choose basic science majors and instead pursue "hot" subjects, because of better career opportunities and higher incomes.
High tuition fees, together with changes in the perception of society, may indirectly create a "crisis of excess" and "crisis of shortage" of some basic sciences in the near future, she said.
At a recent conference on university autonomy held in Hanoi, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam emphasised equality for everyone in accessing high-quality higher education.
Increasing tuition fees without a mechanism for scholarship funds and lack of support from the State budget will pose a great challenge.
In response to the increase in university tuition fees, Deputy Minister of Education and Training Hoang Minh Son said that it is necessary to recognise the nature of the problem.
Currently, the total investment cost for a student is still very low compared to the rest of the world.
In order to improve the quality of education and training, it is necessary to increase the level of investment for students, through investment in facilities and quality of lecturers.
According to Son, some universities in the region have charged ten times higher than public universities in Vietnam.
If the current level of investment remains the same, it will be difficult for domestic universities to compete./.
VNA
