The core issue is the quality of human resources.

SGGP 09/06/2023 06:46

Before 2013, except for a small number of students who were directly admitted to university according to the Ministry of Education and Training's admission regulations, all others had to take the university entrance exam (referred to as the "three common" entrance exam: common exam period, common exam questions, and common selection process).

Since 2013, some universities have piloted admissions based on high school academic results (often referred to as admissions based on academic transcripts). From 2015, after the unification of the two national high school graduation exams and the national university entrance exam, along with the implementation of autonomous admissions, the admission methods of universities have become very diverse.

In 2022, with the goal of eliminating fraudulent admissions for universities, the Ministry of Education and Training initially estimated 20 admission methods. However, when the common admissions software was put into operation, the actual number of methods appeared to be much larger, leading to many conflicting opinions.

In terms of autonomous admissions and admission requirements for each major, universities can independently decide on admission methods (regarding application forms, admission criteria, and appropriate admission schedules) to ensure they recruit candidates who meet the entry requirements for training, provided those candidates have graduated from high school.

In 2023, the Ministry of Education and Training continued to publish a list of 20 admission methods. Therefore, the issue here is not that there are too many admission methods, but rather the difficulties in the common admissions system when filtering out fraudulent applications from candidates. Registration for early admission methods still requires re-registration (from the university and from the candidate) on the common system, and then the common system is used again to filter out fraudulent applications from "non-early" methods, prolonging the admissions process to over 6 weeks.

The only solution to this problem is for all admission methods to be considered simultaneously on the system (meaning universities are not allowed to consider any method, including direct admission or priority admission, before the high school graduation exam results are available). Another solution is to revert to the admission process before 2022, meaning only the method of considering high school graduation exam scores (the last admission method in terms of time) is filtered out, while other admission methods are "filtered out" by the candidates and universities themselves. Candidates admitted through early admission methods will confirm their enrollment at the university and on the system, and then only those who have not confirmed their enrollment will be considered for admission based on high school graduation exam scores.

Currently, there are also views advocating for abolishing the use of high school transcripts for university admissions or abolishing the high school graduation exam. I believe these two viewpoints contradict each other. It's important to remember that a mandatory requirement for university admission is that students must have graduated from high school. Therefore, regardless of a student's high school transcript scores, the high school diploma is the most important basis for university admission.

Currently, the method of admission based on academic transcripts at universities accounts for nearly 40% of the total university enrollment quota, and the number of students admitted through this method also accounts for more than one-third (36%) of the total number of new students in 2022. Thus, this is the second most important admission method after the method of admission based on high school graduation exam scores and is the main source of student recruitment for private universities. Therefore, the issue is not about abandoning the admission method based on academic transcripts, but rather about standardizing the assessment (scores) at the high school level to accurately reflect students' abilities.

Similarly, the view that if the high school graduation exam pass rate is almost absolute, then there's no need to hold a graduation exam is also extreme. Simply put, if the graduation exam is abolished, what will replace the more than 260,000 university enrollment slots (accounting for approximately 50% of the total enrollment)? In that case, universities would either have to organize their own entrance exams or rely on academic transcripts for admissions.

The core of the admissions process, with its multiple methods, still aims to select the best students who meet the training requirements during their university studies. Based on the mandatory requirement of graduating from high school, universities need to proactively set admission criteria that are appropriate to the specific needs of each field of study, ensuring the quality of human resources for society.

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