Tackling a serious shortage of lecturers with PhDs

By Hiep Pham. Vietnam is facing a shortage of highly qualified academics in its universities and colleges as a result of the over-expansion of higher education in the past two decades. In 2012, only 11% of the country’s 84,109 lecturers held doctorate degrees. And the proportion is getting worse; in 2000, nearly 15% of 30,309 academics had PhDs. The ratio of PhD-holding lecturers per student is even more alarming – over the 12 years the ratio has fallen from 0.5% (one highly qualified lecturer per 200 students) in 2000 to 0.415% in 2012. Read more...