The Hanoitimes - Scientists and educators have warned that with the current unreasonable investment policies, Vietnam would lack the workforce for the science and technology development in 5-7 years.

Vietnam would take the consequence soon

Professor Dr Vu Minh Giang, Deputy Director of the Hanoi National University, said that in the 2012 academic year, his school received very few registrations to attend the university entrance exams from the students from renowned high schools. Especially, social sciences cannot attract students nowadays. This shows that the youth nowadays does not like making scientific research.

“Once students do not want to devote themselves to scientific research, this means that research institutes will not be able to employ talented people. Those, who have high capability, will now follow scientific studies any more,” Giang said.

He went o­n to say that a lot of scientists are at the age of retirement, while Vietnam still does not found talented scientists who will replace them. “Vietnam will seriously lack young talented scientists in just five or seven years,” Giang said.

Why don’t young talented people want to follow scientific research? Dr Van Tat Thu, Deputy Minister of Interior Affairs has attributed to the unreasonable mechanism.

Scientists can o­nly receive modest monthly salaries, which, in many cases, are not big enough to cover their basic needs. The wage scale shows big problems in the way the state treats scientists.

The narrow gaps between the income levels show that the State does not pay much attention to the efficiency of the works the scientists can fulfill, while they do not truly reflect the differences in the qualifications and the works taken by scientists.

Thu said that a sportsman would be awarded the third class Labor Medal if he gets medals at Olympic games. However, the scientists, who fulfill valuable scientific research works, may not get this favor.

A report released by the Ministry of Education and Training at a recent workshop showed that while the number of students has increased by 13 times, the number of university lecturers has increased by three times o­nly.

As such, the big training scale is a big barrier to the upgrading of the training of the workforce for the science and technology development.

A World’s Bank report in 2008 pointed out that Vietnam ranked the 11th among the 12 surveyed Asian countries in terms of the quality of the labor force with 3.79/10 points.

The “leveling pay” mechanism needs to be removed

Experts have pointed out that the egalitarianism has been, step by step, killing the creativeness. With the “leveling pay” mechanism, all scientists still can salaries from the state even though they do not join scientific research projects, or do not fulfill their duties. Therefore, scientists would rather to sit idle than working hard for the modest pay.

Dr Giang from the Hanoi National University said that if a leader offers special preferences to talented scientists, he would face the strong opposition and violent criticism. Therefore, it would be better for them to “divide equally the budget to everyone.”

Dr Le Bo Linh, Deputy Chair of the National Assembly’s Science, Technology and Environment Committee, said he can see problems in all issues, from training, recruitment, treatment to assessment of scientists.

“Vietnam wants to develop nuke energy, but it has just begun the training. Meanwhile, the people, who followed the major in the past, have been working in untrained fields. Meanwhile, talented people can o­nly follow scientific research in foreign countries,” Linh said. “Ngo Bao Chau, a talented mathematician, is a typical example.”