Thursday, March 26, 2009

Mistakes in university enrolment handbooks make students suffer

VNN
March 26, 2009

VietNamNet Bridge – Fourteen mistakes have been discovered so far in the ‘Things to know about university and junior college enrolment in 2009’ published by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET).

MOET has confirmed that there are 14 mistakes in the ‘Things to know about university and junior college enrolment in 2009’ handbook. The mistakes relate to figures in enrolment quotas and study branch codes of universities.

The ministry said that on March 23, it sent dispatches to local education and training departments, universities and junior colleges to inform about the mistakes.

However, a problem has arisen that the mistakes may lead to misunderstanding in students’ registration. The problem lies in the fact that students began registering to take university entrance exams two weeks ago, before the mistakes were found and confirmed. Therefore, many of them might have made wrong registrations due to the mistakes.

Ngo Kim Khoi, Deputy Director of the University Education Department under MOET, said that schools can decide for themselves whether to allow students to take back the registrations to change the declarations. As for students who submitted registrations at local education and training departments, the local departments can decide themselves whether to allow students to change registrations.

However, Khoi said that in principle, students have the right to change the registrations.

Meanwhile, universities and junior colleges are complaining that they have found a lot of incorrect information in the handbook, which they fear will cause difficulties for their enrolment.

Associate Professor Dr. Huynh Thanh Hung, Vice Director of the HCM City Agriculture and Forestry University, said that the handbook did not provide information about the university’s finance administration branch (study branch code 410, enrolling students under A and D1 groups, and enrolment quota 100).

‘We began enrolling students for the finance administration in 2008, and we don’t know why the handbook did not cover the information about the training branch,” he said.

Dr. Vo Van Thang, Deputy Director of the An Giang University, complained that last year’s handbook missed information about the pedagogical English language branch for junior college training (3 year training), and this year’s handbook, once again, repeats the mistake.

Thang said that this training branch has existed for the last several decades, and it is illogical to ignore the information in the handbook.

In order to have the information about the training branch to be published in the handbook, the university needs to show the decision that allows the university to carry out the training in this branch. However, Thang said that decades ago, when the university began providing the training branch, it only reported this to MOET.

Meanwhile, in previous years, the university enrolled students under A, B, C and D1 groups for primary education study branch. However, it is not allowed to enroll students under the B-group this year (with B-group, students have to take mathematics, chemistry and biology exams).

Besides, a lot of mistakes in printing have been found and has led to misleading information in the names of universities, addresses and telephone numbers.

Nguyen Toan, MA, Director of the Thu Duc Technology Junior College, said that the handbook misprinted the name of the college. In the handbook, the name was misprinted as the ‘Thu Duc Industry Junior College’ while it should be read as ‘Thu Duc Technology Junior College,’ and the college code is CCO.

VietNamNet, TP, TT

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