Education Minister, experts discuss how to attract Vietnamese overseas talent

Vietnam's recruitment scheme cannot encourage competition
There has been no official report about the percentage of Vietnamese who return to the homeland after they finish studies overseas. However, experts all agree that many of them choose to stay and work abroad because of better living conditions, higher expected pay and better job prospects.

“As for them returning to Vietnam, it is a very difficult decision to make,” said Chau from VIASM.

The other reasons that make it difficult to attract Vietnamese graduates to return to Vietnam, according to Chau, is the ‘closed’ labor market at Vietnam’s universities.

In Vietnam, lecturers rarely leave one university for another. In most cases, excellent graduates stay at universities to be trained to become lecturers and will work there for their entire lives unless something happens which forces them to leave.

The problem has been discussed by professors of VEF (Vietnam Education Foundation) and other analysts who describe this as an ‘inbreeding’ recruitment scheme.

In principle, if universities want to improve their prestige and lure talent, they need to compete with others like businesses do.

Young PhDs don’t know where they will work in Vietnam

After young PhDs decide to return to Vietnam, they will have to think about where they will work. And he will have to call his parents and relatives to ask if they have relations with any VIP or university who can recruit him.

“This means that there are problems in the Vietnamese labor market,” Chau said. “The information about recruitment policies must be transparent."

Son from the Hanoi University of Technology thinks that there are things that need to be done to attract young PhDs.

From this academic year, the university will apply the new recruitment method. In the past, two recruitment campaigns were carried out within a year. But now, the school will recruit regularly at any time and the recruitment will last until it can find candidates who can satisfy the requirements.

Son also said that it is necessary to give support to young PhDs in the first years after returning to Vietnam. 

“As the state can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to send scientists to training courses for doctorates, it will also be able to spend tens of thousands of dollars to support them in the first 1-2 years in Vietnam,” Son commented.

Pioneers need to be protected
MOET’s Minister Phung Xuan Nha said he not only wants to attract young PhDs, but also Vietnamese scientists overseas, who have experience and relations with prestigious international scientists.

He asked the experts to think about whether there should be a service which acts as the bridge to connect overseas Vietnamese and invite them to Vietnam.

In order to attract them, Nha said, specific targets and plans need to be set up instead of general requirements.

For example, the Hanoi University of Technology needs to identify where it will be in the world’s map of technology universities in five or 10 years. 

Tuan contributed his opinion, saying that MOET will set requirements and Son will show solutions to attract talents, not only Vietnamese, but talents from all over the world.

However, in order to reach the goal, Son may suggest new solutions and raise new ideas that go beyond the current legal framework. In this case, Son needs MOET’s support.

Vietnam needs specific policy
While discussing solutions to attract overseas Vietnamese to the homeland, Nha said there must be a specific policy, because general measures will not bring high efficiency.

“First of all, I will propose to the government to attract talent in the fields of education & training, and science and technology to strengthen the research capability of institutes and schools,” Nha said.

Tuan said that specific orientations need to be set up. “The people with creativity and the capability of leading teams are the ‘elite’. And leading experts like Chau. They are the people we need to attract,” Tuan said.

“It is necessary to identify branches which we need to pay special attention to and can develop strongly,” he added.

What attracts international scientists to Vietnam?
According to Chau, this must not be income, because Vietnam cannot compete with the US and other countries by offering high pay, though this is what China is trying to do. 

What they want are good universities, good students and good Vietnamese colleagues for them to exchange scientific views.

Chau is confident that many scientists are willing to go to Vietnam and what Vietnam needs to do is to attract them with reasonable policies.

Vietnam is one of the countries which suffer most from climate change. Therefore, many scientists want to go to Vietnam to conduct research to find out if similar problems may occur in their countries.

No lifetime employment policy?

Nha emphasized that in the long term, universities will operate under an autonomy policy. And if so, they will have the right to make decisions on personnel themselves.

Nha believes there are problems in the Civil Servant Law, under which people with longer service time will receive higher salaries. 

He wants a new policy under which university lecturers will work under labor contracts, while the lifetime employment policy will be removed.