Survey of South Vietnamese Universities Describes Severe Problems, Shortcomings

On March 23, 1967, a small plane crashed into a mountainside 20 miles north of Da Nang, Vietnam, killing all eight passengers and the pilot. The passengers--all of them American educators--were conducting a survey on behalf of the Agency for International Development on public universities in South Vietnam. The plane crash occurred only a week before the educators were scheduled to return home from their year-long study.

One of the men conducting the survey was Vincent F. Conroy, lecturer on Education and director of field studies for Harvard's School of Education.

After the plane crash, three men, including Russel G. Davis, lecturer on Education and associate director of the Center for Studies in Education and Development, assumed responsibility for completing the report.

The following excerpts from the report are only a small fraction of the finished document. Most of the study's specific recommendations concerning university administration and organization have been eliminated.

The growth of the system in an age of turmoil and in response to immediate needs and demands has resulted in an ambiguous status for higher education in Vietnam. No active unit of the national government has the responsibility for continually setting goals for higher education and no way exists for readily interpreting the people's needs into higher education programs. Decisions affecting programs, organization and funding are made on the basis of short-term problems rather than on careful definitions in the long-term national interest. A lack of clarity in the purposes of the various institutions deprives the country of the high regard that a people should have for the education and training of their leaders and experts.

Against great difficulties, universities and some university programs do move forward. The heroic efforts of a number of Vietnamese officials who have taken initiative and who have stood fast in adversity encourage the survey team to believe that careful definitions of the authority and responsibility of boards, rectors, deans and other officials, accompanied by a stabilizing of their roles will enhance the possibilities of their leadership.

Country's Problems

University programs must serve both the needs of nations and of individuals. In Vietnam they can only do so by becoming immediately responsive to the country's problems.

It is hard to know and perhaps irrelevant to consider the extent to which the wide gap between the economic needs of Vietnam and its programs in the universities is due to the nation's preoccupaiton with war, the shortage of resources, the relative newness of its institutions, or to the academic customs that have been inherited by the country. Whatever its root causes, all Faculties except Medicine, Dentistry and Pedagogy have graduated less than five per cent of their total enrollment. The survey team interprets this as an indication of a waste of manpower, traceable in part to present university policies and programs.

Rigid standards applied in the form of examinations have the effect of controlling the numbers of students entering occupations for which there is a surplus such as lawyers, pharmacists, and architects. The same rationale also dictates a reduction in the number of students in occupations badly needed by the country, for instance, medicine and dentistry. Not only is the country deprived of the services of more leaders and experts under such a system, but the catastrophe to individuals is immeasurable. The duplication of some programs, such as law in two universities and planed in a third, and the absence of other programs anywhere in the system means that Vietnamese universities have not undergone the reorientation to essential needs that the country requires.

The success of the faculties of pedagogy in graduating a large proportion of students preparing for careers as secondary school teachers is an encouraging sign. Since this represents a joint effort between the government and the universities, it means that such cooperation can help to reduce deficiencies of national need. Agriculture, the various fields of engineering education and business and public administration need to be elevated to university status. Moreover, the universities need new programs and reorientation of their methods of selecting students to avoid the waste of manpower which occurs through duplication of effort and the lack of articulated purposes.

In order to meet needs for skills and specialization, the University of Vietnam should incorporate programs of agriculture, engineering and administration.

Agriculture, in normal times, is the basic economic occupation of a majority of the citizens of Vietnam and in the renewal of Vietnam's status as a food producer and exporter lies important potential for the nation's future. The goals of these new programs should, therefore, be national in scope and should be aimed at the realization of the enormous potential of the Mekong Delta.

Vietnam's long travail in war has deferred the development of the kind of leadership needed to create for its people the material advantages of developed nations. Improvements in transport, the creation and utilization of power resources, the development of an industrial capacity, and the use of mechanical and electronic technology require the education of substantial numbers of applied scientists.

As new programs are created, ways must be found to eliminate inefficiencies in the use of student and faculty resources within the university structures. The centralization of all student registration within each university and beginning the careers of all students in a common academic program prior to their pursuit of more specilaized training are, in the view of the survey team, necessary reforms in the ordering of existing and new programs. All students should be admitted to a balanced program of studies, including some electives, at the beginning of their university careers. One possible way to accomplish this is to combine the present Faculties of Letters, Science and some of the functions of the Faculty of Law into a common program combining humanities, social sciences, foreign languages, mathematics, and natural sciences. Professional faculties should then establish criteria in terms of numbers of years to be required as preparation for specific programs to take place in their faculties. The individual programs of students in the preparatory years should be planned in view of their ultimate career aspirations, in short, to make them eligible for admission to the professional faculty of their choice.

Four year programs in the arts, sciences, social sciences, and humanities must still be a vital concern of the university. The tasks of the combined faculties to provide basic studies for all students regardless of the choice of professional specializations must be reemphasized in order to avoid leaving the impression that this reorganization is primarily a way of preparing for professional studies.

The combination of letters, sciences, and some present functions of law is also intended to centralize scarce faculty and material resources. Under this plan, it should be unnecessary to offer the same courses in different faculties; the combined faculty can thus be viewed as a teaching resource for the entire university.

Increased Opportunities

In this scheme, the opportunities for the individual student would be increased; he could prepare for admission to a professional training program in the university; he could continue studies begun in the common program toward degrees in letters, sciences, or social sciences; or he could delay a decision and continue a broad program of studies toward university graduation until he is motivated for more specific training. In any event a course credit system would be required in lieu of the present annual examination.

The survey team believes that a core program in each university which offers a basic education to undergraduates can provide a more efficient way of utilizing the human resources which it is the university's responsibility to train and educate. From the students' points-of-view it is a more orderly transition to higher education that provides a necessary period of exploration of the career possibilities of university training. From the points-of-view of faculties, it provides an important basis on which to estimate the probabilities of the success of individual students in particular programs such as law, medicine, architecture, dentistry, and pharmacy.

The creation of new programs in agriculture, engineering and business administration and the reordering of present university programs are recommended as a means of closing the wide gap that exists between the needs of Vietnam and the purposes manifested by public higher education. The careful selection of students for professional programs, the opportunity to select careers wisely, and the adjusting of numbers of students to program needs in the country are the outcomes expected of of the centralization of undergraduate study. Combined with attention to individual problems, the university should by these means reduce drastically the very high percentage of students who do not now complete their higher education.

The quest for knowledge in the higher education of Vietnam is hampered by conditions that originate in war, underdevelopment and custom. There are few resources for research or for teacher improvement and few exceptions to the dominant teaching method of lectures which become student's notes and the subjects of annual examinations. As a result there is little breadth to teaching styles and the process, to a great extent, has become predictable, uniform, and for the student unexciting. Accomplishment, for the student, is almost totally in terms of passing examinations; there exist too few opportunities to analyze or compare ideas, to discover meaning for oneself, or to create anew, all of which are requirements of maturing scholarship.

Students' attitudes, as they have been gathered and analyzed by the survey team, reflect not only the feeling of deprivation of material resources, but also discouragement at the formalism and lack of practicality of many of their experiences. The learning process for too many of these in too many courses consists only of registration, memorization of notes, and the taking of examinations. Many students do not know the excitement that can come from learning itself, its process and its quest as an end in itself.

The survey team talked to fine teachers who broaden their students' opportunities to study and who callenge them to give dimension to their work, but those who took such initiatives were sometimes unsupported by administration and faculty. Moreover, such teachers are in opposition to the expectations of students whose ingrained motivation is to pass examinations and who have no other models articulated to them as alternatives.

To a major extent the problem of the university's programs can only be solved by its faculties. Changes in organization can be made more easily than can those of style and process which are the products of experience and long habit. The needs of the country require, however, that this task be undertaken by the Faculties of the University of Vietnam. Institutional and personal styles must change and greater use must be made of a variety of teaching methods.

At the same time, the role of the university teacher must be enhanced through improvements in rewards, promotions, opportunities for further study, and greater security. Such changes should also make it possible to attract more able people into the field.

The ways of obtaining money, facilites, and equipment needed to improve conditions for students and faculty have still to be developed by the Vietnamese government and external assistance agencies. Nothing can be gained by vastly increased investment in materials unless their use is optimized by the purposes and practices of the people who will use them.

The process of higher education in Vietnam is impeded by limitations in material resources which have resulted in the disrepair and deterioration of buildings, terminated construction programs and insufficient supplies and equipment. No extensive reforms in higher education are possible without infusions of substantial new money utilized in major areas of need according to a carefully arranged system of priorities.

The annual cost of educating a Vietnamese student in the present universities at Can Tho, Hue and Saigon is quite low in comparison to institutions within knowledge of the survey team.

Burdens of War

The root cause, of course, is the inability of the country to support needed programs that arises from the underdeveloped nature of the economy and the heavy burdens of war. The leaders of the universities have had their plans curtailed and restricted by annual budget cuts which allow them the means of funding little more than salaries at minimum levels. For fiscal 1967, the University of Saigon requested 250 million piasters and received 168 million (about $141,000 American dollars); the University of Can Tho for the same year requested 474 million pisters and received less than 174 million.

The effects of inflation have seriously impeded the development of physical facilities for the nation's higher education. Sorely needed student housing at Saigon and a wing of the medical faculty at Hue have stood since 1964 and 1965 in half-finished condition, at the point where money allocated for their construction ran out.

There are no ways to provide the means in Vietnam for rapid and efficient access to printed materials in the national language. Not only are university libraries small and texts scarce but book collections that do exist require fluency in a foreign language on the part of the user. The 20,000 volume central library at Hue, assembled with great difficulty, is more than 50 in French, Chinese and English. Moreover students without fluency in a foreign language are restricted in their programs by the fact that several courses taught by foreign professors are given in the native language of the instructor.

Money must be made available for a large number of program needs, including construction and new equipment. But sources of funds are too few and Vietnam's needs too great to permit a response to needs at all levels at once. A master plan must be devised which includes a system of priorities strategically planned and scheduled to have the greatest impact for improvement of higher education in the country.

New money and new sources of it are vital needs in the improvement of Vietnamese higher education. New construction programs should be based on a concept of centralization which permits and enhances the use of scarce personnel as well as materials. Centralized systems of translation of lectures, new central libraries and text book reproduction are high priority needs for universities. New construction programs should facilitate needed changes in the process of higher education as exemplified in the way that completion of the central facility for the combined Faculty of Arts and Sciences will make it possible for the university system to develop rapidly.