According to statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training, from now till 2015, Hanoi and HCM City will need nearly 4 million top quality workers in the fields of information technology, tourism, shipbuilding, finance and banking. On average, each sector needs an additional 10,000-15,000 workers per year, but current training programmes have only met 40-60 percent of the demand for human resources. Training highly qualified workers is of great significance for both local and foreign enterprises and corporations and for the country’s development.

Lack of co-ordination between enterprises and training centres

Over the past six months, nine agreements and 350 contracts have been signed between enterprises and universities. However, to implement these agreements, there remain obstacles, which need regular co-ordination between enterprises and training centres. It is a fact that enterprises need skilled workers and have to go to universities to find good students. Training centres are very passive in training high quality human resources. In addition, due to a lack of job experience, students do not meet with the working requirements demanded by enterprises.

Huynh Cong Minh, director of HCM City’s department of training and education said in mid-March 2008 that Vietnam ranks fifth in the world in the shipbuilding industry. However, the shipping industry still faces great challenges due to the lack of human resources. From now till 2015, each year, the shipbuilding sector needs to provide an additional 15,000 workers as current training schemes now only meet 40 percent of the demand for human resources. To overcome this shortage of human resources, in January 2008, 22 agreements were signed to provide training and human resources for the shipbuilding sector between universities and enterprises. However, both universities and enterprises have encountered difficulties such as lack of co-ordination with training centres to create high quality training programmes for students who still lack practical skills to meet the working requirements of enterprises.

Each year, Vietnam produces more than 315,000 university graduates but only one-third of them can meet the working requirements of enterprises. This is a great waste for the country.

Deputy Minister of Education and Training Banh Tien Long said the reasons for the shortage of human resources in the field of IT, tourism, shipbuilding, finance and banking are the shortcomings in the education and training sector.

Education programmes in universities, institutes and colleges are not developed on a par with the region and the world, thus fail to the meet requirements of the integration process and help graduates adapt themselves flexibly in their careers. In many universities, teaching methods are ineffective and focus too much on theory rather than practice. In addition, the Ministry of Education and Training has not yet made official reports on the activities of training centres in order to assess of the quality and management of these centres.

Moreover, there is a shortage of lecturers specializing in economics studies. Many economics teaches are lacking in professional skills and have few opportunities to access the business environment to improve their capacity. On the other hand, due to the shortcomings in salary policy, it is difficult to recruit high-quality teachers and experts.

Explaining the reason why the education programmes of universities and colleges can not meet the requirements needed for employment, Tran Thi Ha, head of the Department of University and Postgraduate Studies under the Ministry of Education and Training, said that universities and colleges do not get enough information from organizations, businesses and the labour market. Furthermore, a close link between training centres and businesses has not yet been set up, and there is still not a method of research or the agencies needed to analyse the demand for labour. Training centres are also not able to monitor graduates and get feedback, so the gap between the supply and demand on the labour market has become bigger ang bigger, Ms Ha added.

A thorny issue in developing human resources

Regarding the shortage of a high-quality workforce, Deputy Prime Minister cum Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Thien Nhan said that the ministry will cooperate with the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs to draw up a plan to set up a national information centre for the labour market and forecast labour demands. The centre will collect and analyse information supplied by labour market information networks inside and outside the country.

According to Hoang Ngoc Vinh, head of the Hoang Ngoc Vinh, Head of the Ministry of Education and Training’s Professional Education Department, it is essential to revamp teaching methods and build a standard education programme with a good infrastructure, high-quality teachers and talented students. To realize this goal, universities should cooperate with businesses to call for financial support in order to upgrade the educational infrastructure and teaching facilities. They should also work closely to develop a good bank of teachers with high professional skills to provide quality education programmes for students to help them fulfill the requirements of businesses. In particular, universities should focus on training 20,000 doctors in the fields of science and technology and business administration. In addition, universities should also apply English-teaching models so that English language skills will give Vietnamese students an advantage during the economic integration process.