by Vu Kim Chung
30-6-2000
An investigation by Vietnam's Ministry of Education uncovered many counterfeit university degrees and some academics say corruption is seriously undermining Vietnam's education system. The ministry conducted a review of 662 state employees who claimed they had received qualifications from six universities in Ho Chi Minh City. One in 10 (10%) of the certificates were fakes.
Many forgeries purported to be degrees awarded by the Ho Chi Minh City University of Law, with the investigation revealing that 32 of 180 documents examined were bogus. Sharper scrutiny of qualifications at that university resulted in 62 expulsions during the first half of 2000, with 12 of those involved government employees undergoing training.
"Most of the culprits are senior officials who are either too busy or too lazy to study and 'treat their teachers nicely' in order to pass examinations," said Ha Dinh Duc, of Hanoi's University of Science. "They are worms eating the country - they have senior positions and serious responsibilities but no knowledge or expertise." He said it was a real threat to the country's development.
It was also revealed that the qualifications of some administrators - most of them members of the communist party - were inadequate, with 65 percent of managers at state-owned-enterprises unable to read a balance sheet. Graft was becoming a concern with regard to high school graduation certificates and university entrance examinations, with investigations revealing that qualifications and high marks were increasingly easy to buy.
The local press reported that the number of students getting high grades increased dramatically since the Government decided in 1996 to allow bright students to enter university without sitting entrance examinations.
"The decision allowed students achieving average grades of 80 percent over three consecutive years . . . [to] skip entrance examinations. In 1996 only 256 students nationwide met those conditions, but in 1998 the figure was 3,754," the report said. It is impossible that in two years students would become that much more intelligent.
Diplomats and Vietnamese sources said even donor-funded overseas scholarships are subject to widespread nepotism, while evidence suggests that sections of the flourishing private education sector are a sham, with students able to buy qualifications without attending classes. One student at a private college said it was common practice for teachers to offer examination papers for sale, allowing those with sufficient resources to avoid the disciplined hard work required of their less prosperous classmates.
Police in Hanoi in May 2000 arrested one forger who confessed to having sold more than 200 fake degrees for about US$200 each. The officers also confiscated 62 bogus seals that were used to validate phoney university awards in civil engineering, finance and education.