Proposal for scholarships for doctoral students

The National Assembly's Committee on Culture and Education believes that doctoral training is elite training, and there needs to be scholarship policies and financial support to attract students.

On October 22, the National Assembly's Committee on Culture and Education released a report on the results of monitoring the implementation of policies and laws on doctoral training. In it, the agency outlined the current status of investment in doctoral training.

According to the Committee for Culture and Education, investment in higher education in general and doctoral training in particular is still low. Currently, the proportion of state budget expenditure on higher education in Vietnam is at 0.27% of GDP - much lower than Thailand (0.64%), China (0.87%), Singapore and South Korea (1%), and Malaysia (1.13%).

The average cost of training a PhD at public universities is about 16 million VND per year (except for the health sciences field, which is about 32 million VND). This level is also much lower than the world. For example, in the UK, this cost is about 15-16,000 pounds per year (450 million VND), in Australia it is about 22-40,000 AUD (340-620 million VND), in Singapore it is about 20-25,000 SGD (357-447 million VND), in the US it is about 28-40,000 USD (688-983 million VND).

The Committee on Culture and Education also believes that the mechanism and policies on scholarships and training funding support for postgraduate students have not received due attention. In many countries such as the US, South Korea, and Singapore, postgraduate students not only do not have to pay tuition fees but are also granted scholarships with enough to cover monthly living expenses and funding to complete their thesis, and even receive a salary when teaching or doing research with their supervisor.

"PhD students in Vietnam have to pay tuition fees and have limited access to research funding from training institutions," the report said. In addition, Vietnam does not have a policy to support and attract doctoral students in natural science and technology research fields, which are essential but have limited students.

Meanwhile, training institutions also face pressure to balance revenue and expenditure according to the autonomous mechanism. These reasons have caused doctoral training to not achieve its goals in both scale and quality.

Considering that doctoral training is elite training, the Committee on Culture and Education recommends having mechanisms and policies to prioritize doctoral training in industries and fields that directly serve the promotion of industrialization, modernization, high-tech industries, and core technologies.

The State also needs to have policies to support scholarships and scientific research funding for graduate students with excellent research and study results, and highly applicable topics and theses.

The financial mechanism and method of funding for training and research need to be changed to the form of ordering, bidding, and assigning tasks.

In addition, the Committee on Culture and Education proposed that the National Assembly should have a thematic resolution on policy orientation to promote and encourage the development of high-quality human resource training. The resolution clarifies the roadmap to increase the proportion of the budget for higher education as a percentage of GDP to reach the average level of countries in the region; increase the investment level for doctoral training in particular and postgraduate training in general.

For the Government, the Committee on Culture and Education recommends considering and issuing a mechanism to support funding for doctoral training activities, support research scholarships for doctoral students, and link the assignment of scientific topics and tasks with doctoral training. The Ministry of Education and Training also needs to research and propose granting scholarships for domestic doctoral training, first of all prioritizing basic and key fields.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training, in the two academic years 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, the total enrollment target for doctoral degrees was nearly 10,200, but the number of students recruited was only over 3,000.

Currently, the state only has a financial support mechanism for doctoral students under the Project to improve the capacity of lecturers and managers of higher education institutions in the period 2019-2030 (Project 89). Accordingly, domestic doctoral students are supported with funding to carry out their thesis topics (13-20 million VND per year and no more than 4 years); supported to publish international scientific articles; attend international conferences, seminars or short-term internships abroad (once during the entire training process).

The tuition fee for PhD programs at public training institutions is currently around 30 million VND per year. A few places pay PhD students by signing full-time employment contracts with them.

Duong Tam

Source link