In December, international donors inc

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ago. When the company was building a $1 billion chip factory outside Ho Chi Minh City, it gave a basic screening exam on technology topics to 2,000 graduating students. Only 90 test-takers scored at least 60 percent, and half failed an English competency test.

Vietnam is reaching out to overseas Vietnamese, seeking to persuade academics to return to their former homeland and train students in hard skills. Vo's university, IU, operated under a state-run umbrella group of schools called the Vietnam National University (VNU), tries to alleviate “brain drain” by offering wages 10 times higher than many other local universities.

Some IU students get the chance to study for two years at universities in the United States, the United Kingdom or Australia, the sort of training that develops their English-language and hard-science skills. IU, which was founded in 2003, says it's looking to Western education models for inspiration. After several trips abroad to start the university, “we learned from the U.S. and other English-speaking countries” on how to run a university, said IU’s rector, Ho Thanh Phong.

Education here is becoming a big business. Between 2001 and 2006, the number of students enrolled in universities or colleges here rose from about 900,000 to 1.6 million, according to the World Bank. And by 2020, Vietnam hopes at least one of its schools will join the ranks of the world's top 200 universities. To do that, the strategies are numerous. For instance, Vietnam is appealing directly to foreign governments to help set up schools. One university based on the German curriculum, the VGU in Ho Chi Minh City, opened its doors two years ago to 32 students. It’s set to finish building its campus by 2016, hoping to enroll 12,000 students. In what was once a staunchly communist country closed off to foreigners, that sort of collaboration is something of a breakaway. The university is the first of its kind to get a charter, for example, that promises a level of academic freedom resembling that of Germany.







Poor families struggling to cope with rising food prices in Vietnam

SOS Children 03 Mar 2011



Yesterday, the UK’s International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell announced the results of two reviews looking into the UK’s future aid giving.

As part of the ‘Bilateral Aid Review’ conducted by the Department for International Development (DFID), it was decided that all aid programmes in Vietnam would close by 2016. Until that time, DFID will continue helping Vietnam achieve its Millennium Development Goals in primary education, HIV/AIDS prevention and sanitation.

Sanitation is a key area where the Vietnamese government continues to focus, as well as on clean water supplies. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) this month announced that it would loan Vietnam 1 billion dollars to improve clean water access for 3 million people. Four out of every ten families in the largest cities have no water supply system and around 20,000 families will be provided with their first water connection.

In December, international donors including the ADB pledged 7.9 billio
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