The National Assembly's Committee on Culture and Education has just sent National Assembly deputies a report on the results of monitoring the implementation of policies and laws on doctoral training recently.
According to the assessment from the Committee of Culture and Education, by 2022, the entire system will have 196 training institutions licensed to train at doctoral level, an increase of 1.66 times compared to the 2014-2015 school year. There are a total of 267 majors and 1,110 majors training at doctoral level.
However, the opening of new doctoral training programs in some fields such as new energy, new materials, new technology, etc. is still limited. Regulations on training majors and codes are still inadequate when some majors are ranked on par with majors. Some major codes are narrow, picky about learners, very difficult to recruit, and many majors are even at risk of having to close their major codes because they cannot recruit PhD students after the prescribed 5-year period.
The rate of doctoral training programs classified by 7 training majors.
The scale of training sectors of the establishments is still quite small and scattered. Over 70.1% of training establishments are currently organizing training in less than 5 majors/specializations, of which 32% only train in 1 major (18 research institutes and 44 higher education establishments).
Regarding the scale of enrollment and training, in the period 2000 - 2022, the report of the Committee on Culture and Education stated that doctoral training institutions have recruited 32,517 new doctoral students (the new recruitment rate increased nearly 5.5 times, from 303 doctoral students in the 2000 - 2001 school year to 1,661 people in the 2021 - 2022 school year).
However, the admission rate is much lower than the target, averaging only about 32% in recent years. Specifically, in the 2019-2020 school year, the total doctoral enrollment target was 5,111; the actual enrollment was 1,274 people (24.93%).
In the 2020-2021 school year, the target is 5,056; actual enrollment is 1,735 (34.32%).
In the 2021-2022 school year, the numbers were 5,143 and 1,661 graduate students (32.3%) respectively, and in the 2022-2023 school year, the target was 5,795 while the actual number of recruits only reached 41.86% with 2,426 people.
"The lack of enrollment targets has led to a lack of competition in many places, leading to laxity in admission selection, especially in terms of professional research capacity. The occupational structure in doctoral recruitment and training is unbalanced. The scale of doctoral training in Vietnam is currently small; attracting international graduate students is still very limited," the report stated.
The Committee for Culture and Education pointed out that the rate of doctoral students who do not complete their programs within 3 years is still high. For example, at the National Economics University, up to 90% of doctoral students cannot complete their doctoral dissertation within the prescribed 3 years and must request an extension to extend the maximum allowed time (up to 5 years).
From the above limitations, the Committee on Culture and Education recommends that the Ministry of Education and Training continue to review and perfect the system of guiding documents and adjust doctoral training towards applying regional and international standards for conditions to ensure training quality.
The Ministry of Education and Training needs to clearly establish a roadmap for long-term and stable quality improvement. Quickly develop, evaluate and promulgate standards for doctoral training programs.
There needs to be a flexible and specific mechanism for admission, quality assurance conditions, especially a roadmap for implementing regulations on permanent lecturers participating in teaching, guiding and participating in the doctoral thesis evaluation council for some specific professions (such as traditional arts, etc.) and specific training institutions. There should be solutions and plans to control the input quality of foreign languages and professional competence of doctoral students.
The Committee also recommends that the Ministry of Education and Training soon supplement regulations binding the responsibilities of instructors, reviewers, and council members in ensuring the quality and scientific value of doctoral theses. Promote academic integrity, avoid favoritism and leniency in guiding, evaluating, and reviewing theses.
Along with that, it is necessary to update and publicize the list of prestigious scientific journals recognized by each industry; have a strategy to develop and improve the quality of the domestic scientific journal system to meet international criteria and standards.
Ha Cuong
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