There needs to be a policy to attract learners into the STEM field.

Many opinions say that, in order to "anticipate" high-quality human resources to serve the scientific and technological revolution and national digital transformation, appropriate policies are needed to attract students to this field.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), in 2024, the enrollment rate of students in STEM majors at the university level has increased significantly. Of the more than 600,000 enrolled students, there were more than 200,000 students in STEM majors; an increase of 10% compared to the previous year. If calculating the average enrollment scale over the past 4 years, STEM-related majors increased by an average of about 10%/year, higher than the average increase rate in enrollment scale of the whole country of about 5.6%/year. The number of students studying STEM majors is currently at about 55 students/10,000 people, this level accounts for about 30% of the total training scale.

There needs to be a policy to attract learners into the STEM field -0 — Vietnam aims to train 1 million students in STEM fields. Illustrative photo

Although the proportion of students in Vietnam studying STEM has increased in recent years in both enrollment and training scale, in the overall picture, compared to developed countries and countries with modern science and technology, this figure in Vietnam is still modest. Specifically, for Singapore, this rate is about 46% of students studying in STEM fields, Korea is about 35%, Finland is about 36% and Germany is about 40%.

Meanwhile, STEM majors play a very important and decisive role in the development of society and the country in the era of Industry 4.0, contributing to creating high-quality human resources in engineering and technology to meet the requirements of national development as stated in Resolution No. 57-NQ/TW of the Politburo on breakthroughs in science and technology development, innovation and national digital transformation. Through STEM majors, learners have the opportunity to apply interdisciplinary knowledge and synthetic skills into practice to solve practical and modern technical problems.

Associate Professor Dr. Le Dinh Hai, Deputy Head of the Faculty of Economics and Development, University of Economics, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, said that STEM is the place to provide a team of highly qualified human resources, capable of solving complex problems in science, technology, environment and society. When the scale of training in these fields is expanded, society will have enough qualified, creative and innovative labor force, contributing to promoting the development of the country. STEM fields not only teach knowledge but also encourage critical and creative thinking; playing a key role in industrial development and economic modernization. Advanced technology and engineering are the foundation for producing high-quality products, thereby creating great added value for the economy and enhancing national competitiveness in the international arena.

Dr. Le Truong Tung, Chairman of the Board of Directors of FPT University, also acknowledged that when it comes to national development, many groups of human resources are needed, and each group of human resources has its own role. However, at a time when we want to develop quickly and sustainably, attract FDI enterprises as well as domestic enterprises in the fields of science, technology, engineering, especially high technology, the demand for high-quality human resources in the field that we often call STEM needs a larger quantity and especially higher quality. Therefore, it is necessary to have a solution to create a shift, impacting each learner to choose this field.

According to Dr. Le Truong Tung, in reality, training high-quality human resources in the STEM field does not stop at knowledge but also requires the ability to research and practice creativity. In the current context, it is necessary to have mechanisms and policies on credit, scholarships and tuition fees to attract excellent students to study in key technical and technological fields because without enough funding for higher education and for learners, the demand for high-quality human resources is very difficult to achieve as desired.

“Student loans are about using future resources to invest in the present, and students will pay with their own money later. This is an important issue, but currently, student loans are small in scale, the amount is also small, and have not really received the attention they deserve compared to other countries,” said Mr. Tung.

Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son said: In the plan for developing the network of higher education institutions until 2030, with a vision to 2050, recently signed by the Prime Minister, Vietnam aims to have 1 million students studying STEM by 2030. The State focuses on investing in upgrading and developing 5 public higher education institutions with leading capacity and prestige in training and research in a number of key and cutting-edge technical and technological fields.

In addition, the Prime Minister also assigned the Education and Training sector to prepare a project to train high-quality human resources to develop high-tech fields. In particular, many policies will be introduced to encourage and motivate young people to study in these fields, including policies to support scholarships for learners, incentive policies as well as policies to attract foreign experts to work...

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