Universities worry over suburb move

Parents wait for their children in front of HCM City University of Industry. The city plans to relocate its university to a suburb but university officials are worried it will make it inconvenient for students and cost too much. — VNA/VNS Photo Trang Duong

HCM CITY — HCM City university officials have urged city leaders to reconsider their plans to shift universities to the city's outskirts, warning the shift will make it too inconvenient for students and cost too much money to build new campuses.

At a meeting held last Friday, Le Bao Lam, rector of the HCM City Open University, agreed the universities needed to move if they were to have enough land to build facilities.

But he also expressed the fear that his university would not be able to build them.

The Department of Planning and Investment, acknowledging the problem, offered two options for universities to choose from.

Under the first the city will identify an investor to build infrastructure, starting with the area northwest of the city, before the universities lease the facilities and move in.

Under the second the authorities will identify the land requirement of each university and provide them funds to build their own infrastructure.

The city has already approved loans of VND300 billion (US$15.3 million) for three years.

Truong Ngoc An, deputy head of the city's University of Architecture, said the loan period was not long enough and should be seven years.

Mai Hong Quy, rector of the HCM City Law University, said moving her university would adversely affect training quality since 10,000 out of its 15,000 students are studying either for a post-graduate or second degree and mostly employed. It would be very hard for them to travel the long distance to school, she explained.

An official from the Viet Nam National University of HCM City complained that the city should have asked the universities before deciding on the relocation.

People's Committee chairman Le Hoang Quan explained that the relocation was one of the best measures to reduce the traffic congestion in the city and develop it.

The good infrastructure that could be developed in their new location would be a major factor in improving quality, he pointed out.

Public universities would be given first priority in moving, with the northwestern suburban districts of Hoc Mon and Cu Chi identified for relocation, he said. — VNS

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City university creates circuit

HCM CITY — The HCM City National University's Integrated Circuit Design Research and Education Centre announced it has succeeded in fabricating Viet Nam's first 32-bit integrated circuit.

Le Quang Minh, deputy director of the university, said chip VN1632 marked important progress for the country's IC design and research sector.

It is the culmination of a 30-month Ministry of Science and Technology project titled "Researching, Developing Design and Creating RISC Chip".

The chip uses IBM 0.13um CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) technology with RISC (Reduced instruction set computing) Harvard Architecture.

It will meet the needs of high-speed and complex tasks like data encoding and decoding and photo processing and communication devices like mobile phones.

Ngo Duc Hoang, director of ICDREC and head of the project, said the centre and Viet Ban Do (Vietmap) Company are co-operating to produce 20,000 chips by 2011 for use in cars.

Nghiem Xuan Minh, head of the ministry's Natural Science and Society Department, said ICDREC would continue to produce high-technology chips especially for using in defence and security.

During the process of creating VN1632, the centre deeply understood 32-bit chip design and had trained a group of professionals along the way.

In 2008 ICDREC created the country's first 8-bit chip. — VNS

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Technology transfers debated

HCM CITY — Legal and trade experts from Australia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sweden, Thailand, the United States, Viet Nam and the World Trade Organisation began a three-day conference in HCM City yesterday to discuss transfer of technology between developed and developing countries.

Sustainable Technology Transfer is being jointly organised by the Ha Noi University of Law, HCM City University of Law, Sweden's Lund University, Japan's Nagoya University, and Britain's Suffolk University.

The conference has been discussing and analysing the restrictions and hurdles to sustainable technology transfer and come up with solutions based on international accords like the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which requires developed countries to support developing countries with technology transfer.

The conference focuses on health, environmental issues, and energy.

The delegates discuss the responsibilities of developed countries in the technology-transfer process, the laws related to transferring technology, and technology transfer in the fields of healthcare and environment.

Mai Hong Quy, rector of the HCM City University of Law, who chaired the conference, said: "Technology plays an important role in economic development not only for developed but also developing countries in a knowledge-based global economy.

"Access to technology helps developing countries like Viet Nam succeed in industrialisation and modernisation."

Participants agreed that technology is a key factor in economic development, especially for developing countries which import technologies. — VNS

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Need for IT testing rises

Phuoc Buu

HCM CITY — Vietnamese universities should urgently set up training programmes to meet the huge software testing requirements of international IT companies, experts say.

These services are currently being outsourced to Viet Nam, and there is a lot of potential to be tapped in this sector, according to participants at a three-day conference early this week.

Many IT companies attempted to cut costs due to the 2009 economic crisis, sparking a surge in outsourcing work to Viet Nam, said Dr Nguyen Quoc Hung, chairman and CEO of the US-based LogiGear Corporation.

"The main demand for software testing is primarily coming from outsourcing demand and HCM City has a lot of potential to play a role in this market since it is ranked fifth in list of the top 50 emerging global outsourcing cities [by Global Service Media].

"The key to success is to equip our workforce with the skill sets to compete in this market," Hung told Viet Nam News, adding that this is a task for universities and other training institutions.

But most universities in HCM City have not included software testing as a subject in their IT training curricula. "Many graduates have complained that they had to work on software testing that they weren't trained for in the IT faculty," said Dang Truong Son of the HCM City University of Technical Education.

Son said the IT faculty was prepared to start such training programmes.

Many universities, including HCM City University of Technology, HCM City University of Pedagogy, Hoa Sen University and HUFLIT University, also told LogiGear Corporation in meeting last week that they were prepared to offer training in software testing.

Dong Thi Bich Thuy, director of the IT Centre of HCM City University of Natural Sciences, said: "Not many IT faculties in universities have a good understanding of the significance of software testing and only my university and the HCM City Technology University have this as a separate subject."

According to Hung the demand for software testers to be trained in universities is huge. His corporation's subsidiary, LogiGear Viet Nam, has around 300 software testers but Viet Nam still needs about 10,000 engineers with software testing skills over the next three years.

Speakers at the conference said great care should be taken when providing the training needed. "Technology is changing so rapidly that the engineers will need deep training to keep up with the changes," said Dr Cem Kaner, director of the testing education centre at the Florida Institute of Technology.

BJ Rollison of Microsoft's engineering excellence group said minor mistakes could badly impact product quality. — VNS

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Universities struggle to recruit lecturers

A lecturer and students at HCM City National University. Low salaries have made it difficult for universities in the southern city to recruit young lecturers. —VNA/VNS Photo Hoang Hai

HCM CITY — Low teacher salaries have made it difficult for universities in HCM City to attract lecturers and meet the target for new hires in 2010 set by the Ministry of Education and Training.

The HCM City University of Law, for example, is still looking for 35 new lecturers to meet the target of a total of 235 for the university.

Rector Mai Hong Quy said applications for the position of lecturers with master's or doctoral degrees had been received year-round to ensure a large pool of candidates.

He added that many candidates had shifted to private educational institutes or companies, where salaries are higher.

The University of Technical Education in HCM City has also failed to meet its recruitment target of 60, and has been able to hire only 35 candidates, including 25 lecturers late last month.

In addition, the University of Finance and Marketing said it selected only six qualified applicants after holding its recruitment exams.

Dinh Trung Chanh, head of Nong Lam University in HCM City's Personnel Office, said the university hoped to employ an additional 46 lecturers and four engineers.

The university continued to receive applications, but graduates with good academic results preferred to work for companies that offered higher salaries.

In the past few years, only a few graduates with good academic results have applied to the university, according to Chanh.

Nguyen Ngoc Thu, an official at the University of Technical Education's Personnel Office, said newly hired lecturers must have one year of probation and their average monthly income would be around VND3 million (US$157), including an allowance of VND500,000 offered by the university.

"Some graduates accept the positions, hoping to get a scholarship to study abroad," Chanh said, adding that many lecturers who received a master's or doctorate abroad then quit and began working for private educational institutions or companies.

The number of university students has increased by 13 times between 1987 and 2009, while the number of lecturers has only tripled, according to a report by the Ministry of Education and Training.

The report said the student-lecturer ratio at universities was higher than the ministry's minimum of 28 students to each lecturer.

In many universities, there are 40 students to each lecturer, according to a survey conducted by the Monitoring Group of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly.

The HCM City University of Foreign Languages-Information Technology topped the listing, with a student-lecturer ratio of 47.3-1, followed by HCM City Open University, with 41.2-1, and Hong Bang University in HCM City, with 40.2-1. — VNS

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