Vietnam struggling to have 1 million IT workers by 2020

VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam is striving to have one million information technology (IT) workers by 2020, three times higher than the current level, 80 percent of whom must meet international standards. The task is burdening the education and training sector.

Huynh Quyet Thang, Head of the Information Technology Institute under the Hanoi University of Technology, believes that one million IT workers by 2020 is a goal within reach. “The number of schools that provide regular training in IT has increased year after year. In 1995, there were only seven IT training faculties, while the number of universities jumped to 133 in 2010. Besides, there are also 153 junior colleges and 351 vocational schools that also provide IT training. In 2010, Vietnam planned to enroll 60,000 IT students. Meanwhile, the enrolment quota increases by 6-8 percent year after year.

Less students want to follow IT study

However, Le Truong Tung, Deputy Chair of the Vietnam Informatics Association, President of FPT University, said that 60,000 is the quota granted by the Ministry of Education and Training to schools, while it is not the actual number of students.

“We do not have accurate figures on IT workers trained every year,” Tung said.

He went on to say that Vietnam once attracted many students to IT studies in 2007-2008. Since then, the number of students registering to study IT decreased by 15 percent in 2009 and 22 percent in 2010. Especially, in 2010, some schools had to stop training IT workers because they did not have enough students.

A recent survey conducted by FPT University shows that fewer students want to study IT. “Only 6.25 percent of 11,000 polled high school students said they want to study IT, while the figure was 8.76 percent in 2009,” Tung said.

Another survey conducted by the Hanoi University of Technology several months ago also showed that 80-90 percent of 12^th graders who are good at mathematics, physics and chemistry of nearly 20 schools in Hanoi choose studies relating to economics, while only a low percentage of students decides to follow technique studies.

IT is no longer an attractive major for students partially because of the low quality of graduates of many IT schools. As graduates cannot meet the requirements set by employers, they cannot find good jobs and they are not interested in studying IT any more. Meanwhile, many majors have emerged as more attractive to students, including finance and banking, which can bring high incomes.

Experts have agreed that the quality of students registering to study IT has downgraded.

Quach Tuan Ngoc, Head of the Information Technology Department under the Ministry of Education and Training, said that the enrollment quota university students has been increasing rapidly in recent years. Five years ago, the quota was 100,000 only, while the number has increased to 500,000. As for IT major, the quota has increased two fold since 2000. Since the quota has increased, the required marks set by schools from university entrance exams has been decreasing.

“The low required marks will certainly affect the training quality, because schools will not be able to select good candidates,” Ngoc warned.

The suggested solutions

Experts say that in order to fulfill the plan to have one million IT workers by 2020, it is necessary to apply measures to make IT more attractive in the eyes of high school students.

Thang said that students should be required to take mathematics, physics and foreign language exams instead of mathematics, physics and chemistry as is currently required. Thang said that foreign languages are very important and necessary for IT students.

Nguyen long, Secretary General of the Vietnam Information Technology Association said that at many international competitions, most of the Vietnamese students could answer half of the total questions. He said that this is because of the poor training in Vietnam. Schools are still teaching Pascal programming language, while foreign countries are teaching C++.

“It is necessary to change the viewpoints for training, upgrade the quality of training,” Thang said, adding that cooperating with foreign investors and educators would be a good solution to attract financial resources and utilize modern training technologies.

Source: Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon