Vietnam to spend $1.3 bln on education development

HANOI, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Vietnamese government has recently approved a national program on education and training development by 2010 with investment of 20,270 billion Vietnamese dong (VND) (nearly 1.3 billion U.S. dollars), according to local newspaper Vietnam Economic Times on Monday.

The program, including six projects to be managed by the Ministry of Education and Training and one project by the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, aims at developing the local education sector to the advanced level of the region and the world.

Out of the fund, 16,420 billion VND (over one billion dollars) will come from the state budget, 2,080 billion VND (130 million dollars) from official development assistance, and 1,770 billion VND (over 110.6 million dollars) from budgets of cities and provinces.

Only half of university and college graduates in Vietnam find jobs right after their graduation, according to a recent survey by the country's Ministry of Education and Training. Syllabuses of many educational establishments in Vietnam, now home to 1,540,201 university and college students or 181 students per 10,000 residents, focus too much on theory, not practical skills.

The Vietnamese government has set a target of 200 tertiary students for every 10,000 people by 2010, 300 by 2015, and 450 by 2020.