CẦN THƠ — The best way to improve the quality of university education in Việt Nam is to provide students with practical experience through collaboration with employers, an education ministry official told university representatives in the southern city of Cần Thơ on September 28.

Hà Hữu Phúc, director of the representative office of the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) in HCM City, mentioned a training model entitled “Enterprise in School” allowing students to participate in work sessions at enterprises during their degree studies.

The programme will provide students with opportunities to turn theories into practice and become employeable right after graduation, instead of having to undertake internships, he said.

“Although identified by MoET a long time ago, such a direction for education reform has only been implemented at a limited number of universities,” he added.

“Not only will it help boost universities’ credibility in terms of training quality, the model will also provide graduates with more job opportunities and reduce staff training costs for employers,” he said.

The model yielded positive results after being implemented at Nam Cần Thơ University in the 2016-17 school year, said university head Professor Võ Tòng Xuân. “Our students got to undertake apprenticeships in professional environments during their freshman year,” he said.

“It helped sharpen their soft skills and provided them with hours of practical training that requires high accuracy, especially for medical, law and technology students.”

For public technology universities that are unable to equip themselves with state-of-the-art facilities, the model is a primary solution to help students keep up with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), said Dr Dương Thái Công, principal of the Cần Thơ University of Technology.

“Since our students will go to work for them after graduation, the employers we collaborate with will take as much responsibility as we do in providing them with modern equipment and an effective practice environment,” he said. “It takes the pressure off the school and allows us to open more training programmes.”  

Higher education accreditation was also discussed at the meeting. It is an effective tool that has helped several countries, including Việt Nam, to maintain their education quality standards and constantly improve their teaching and learning quality, said director Hà Hữu Phúc.

Of five universities in the city, Cần Thơ University has made its way into a number of regional and international rankings. The remaining ones have registered to be evaluated in the 2017-18 school year. — VNS