Distance Education and Its Contribution to Rural Development in Vietnam.

The technology boom that has brought drastic change and prosperity to many parts of the world has largely bypassed Vietnam. The country endured, first, the consequences of 30 years of war and then a long economic embargo (1975-1990), which was no less devastating than war. To this day, Vietnam is still considered one of the poorest and most underdeveloped countries in the world.

Vietnam is largely an agricultural country. Eighty percent of the population lives in undeveloped, rural, mountainous, and remote areas. Many of the country's main export products (rice, coffee, tea, rubber, seafood) come from agriculture and fishing. In addition to agriculture, fishing, and tropical forestry, Vietnam also benefits from gas, oil, coal, and mineral resources. Its vast shoreline (more than 3,000 kilometers, or nearly 2,000 miles) and major ports lying in the middle of international sea routes are key to its economic future. Of all Vietnam's resources, one of the most important is its manpower: millions of industrious and intelligent Vietnamese with a proud tradition of overcoming difficulties.

Limited opportunities for education, however, prevent many Vietnamese people from realizing their full potential. Shortcomings in basic education and skills training, especially among the rural population, mean that citizens often are not adequately prepared to compete in the economy and withstand its fluctuations. Therefore, the proportion of poor people among the rural population is much higher than in urban areas.

Since the end of the 1980s, however, Vietnam's Socioeconomical Renovation (the free-makert economic reforms known as Doi Moi) has brought hope that the country will continue on a path of rapid, yet stable, economic development. The current level of socioeconomic growth in Vietnam requires improvements to the education and training sector, which cannot yet meet the needs of the country, due to constraints in national resources.

At the present time, the development of Vietnam's human resources in general, and of a well-trained, skilled workforce in particular, is of vital importance.

Needs for Education and Training in Vietnam in the Next Decades

In the forthcoming decades, the education and training sector in Vietnam will have to address the following urgent needs:

* Educating and training the increasing number of youth. At the current rate of population growth (about 2 percent per year), by the year 2010 there will be approximately 2 million new children entering primary school in Vietnam, 1.5 to 1.8 million new secondary students, and more than a million children leaving secondary school every year.

In fact, anywhere from 15 to 25 percent of schoolchildren living in certain areas of the country (especially the mountainous regions of the north, the highlands in the center, and the remote countryside of the south) cannot finish their studies each year, because of geographic and economic constraints. As a consequence, the quality of life between urban and rural areas has only widened.

* Training human resources in new technologies and practical skills to achieve economic development. Certain remote areas, especially those populated by ethnic minorities, still rely on traditional methods of farming, livestock breeding, and making handicrafts. More than 75 percent of Vietnam's workers are employed in agriculture, which produces less than 35 percent of the country's total GDP. The proportion of skilled workers to the total workforce is still very low. According to a recent survey, the proportion is 23 percent in the north, 18 percent in the south, and only 8 percent in the central zone of Vietnam (Nguyen et al., 1996).

To accelerate the socioeconomic development in rural areas, the Vietnamese government established many new Export Processing Zones (EPZs). The need for a well-trained workforce in these EPZs is strong. For instance, by the year 2005, the Dungquat oil refinery complex (a recently built EPZ in the Quang Ngai province, one of the poorest regions of the central zone) will need as many as 4,000 general engineers and 12,000 skilled workers. Given the present condition of education and training, it is doubtful that the EPZ will have even 5 to 10 percent of the manpower it needs by then.

* Retraining, upgrading, and standardizing the working staff in all sectors of the national economy: state, private, and foreign joint ventures. Approximately 80 percent of the country's workforce was originally trained along different lines. Consequently, they are not adequately prepared for today's economy, and they need additional training. For example, government officials and middle level managers are supposed to know at least one foreign language, to help them communicate with the international community. By the year 2010, millions of Vietnamese will need basic and intermediate language training. In addition, there is an enormous need for teachers of information technology (IT). In order to have enough teachers of basic IT for all major secondary schools throughout the country, 25,000 to 30,000 graduates will need IT training by the year 2010.

Figure 1

Total land area                     330,000 sqkm
Population                          78,000,000 (1998)
  Percent of population living in
  rural areas                       80%
GDP/per capita                      260 USD (1985), 360 USD (1998)
Rate of annual increase in GDP      1990-1966: 9%, 1998-2000: 7%
Illiteracy rate                     12% (UNESCO, 1997)
Tertiary and higher education
  institutions                      156

It is obvious that traditional modes of education and training will not be sufficient to cope with the abovementioned urgent needs in a country with limited resources. Traditional education (i.e., face-to-face education) requires a lot of material considerations: buildings and classrooms, facilities and equipment, teachers, and staff members. The shortage of classrooms, facilities, and teachers often means that students must go to class in shifts, taking either morning, afternoon, or evening classes. Establishing new schools, colleges, or universities in a short time is impossible, in light of the nation's current economy. Furthermore, a large number of young people in remote regions cannot afford to leave their homes and study in metropolitan centers.

To meet these challenges, the education and training sector should explore the possibilities of offering open learning and distance education (OL & DE) classes. Such classes are the cheapest and most flexible forms of education, can supplement traditional education, and can effectively educate and train people in rural areas.

Target Groups and Training Curriculum for DE in Vietnam

Throughout the world, target groups and curriculum for DE are very varied, depending on different requirements and characteristics of each country. In Singapore, DE institutions, such as Singapore Open University Degree and Extramural Institute, primarily deal with building knowledge. In Australia, a very large but thinly populated country, DE developers are greatly concerned with reaching isolated children in remote areas: Regional centers for DE are in charge of catering to primary and secondary education for all children in an area encompassing 200 to 300 square kilometers (about 120 to 180 square miles). The Radio-Television Universities of China and the Sukho Thai Thammathirat Open University in Thailand are mainly designed for inservice and/or part-time learners.

Vietnam has its own particular needs. Since the era of correspondence education first began, there has been three distinct group of learners: students at the primary and secondary school levels, adult secondary learners, and inservice students.

* DE aids traditional education. Vietnam has a great shortage of quality primary and secondary school teachers, especially in rural areas. Consequently, many students in rural areas have difficulty passing the national entrance test necessary for enrolling in either a university or a vocational college. Until the mid-1980s, almost all high school graduates who passed these tests were from the cities or urban areas. Since then, Vietnam's national radio and television networks have helped rural students by establishing and maintaining many DE programs. In these programs, experienced teachers from the most prestigious institutions in the country present weekly tutorial sessions, in which they summarize subjects taught in secondary schools (3-6 programs per week, with special concentration before national examinations are administered).

Many programs for teaching foreign languages--for example, English, French, Mandarin, Russian, Japanese, German--also have been established, as well as those for science and mathematics. These programs are helpful for teachers in the remote areas, as well as for students. A few years after their initial implementation, these programs were providing pupils from remote regions with opportunities to make contact with qualified teachers, and thereby markedly reduced the education gap between rural and urban pupils. In fact, DE in Vietnam has greatly helped rural areas, spurring education development within those regions.

* Inservice training and degree formation. Approximately 800,000 to 1,000,000 Vietnamese graduate from high school each year, but only 15 to 20 percent of them have the opportunity to continue full-time study in tertiary education. The other 80 to 85 percent have to immediately go about finding jobs, with or without some level of apprenticeship. Many will be seeking additional training in order to better their social position and quality of life.

Many inservice students have found their previous training to be lacking, and thus they are unable to adapt to the labor market. Some need inservice training, and so DE is an ideal approach.

* Non-degree programs. A large group of inservice learners--including farmers and artisans in rural areas--do not require systematic training and/or degrees, yet they would still like to learn ways to improve their skills and working conditions.

In response, DE institutions, in cooperation with the national radio and television stations, provide a series of popular scientific training programs. The topics include hygiene and general medicine, fertilizer use, breeding and husbandry, pisciculture, the use of computers in the office, repair of small electrical and electronic appliances, traditional handicrafts, etc. These programs have improved the lives of many people, in part by helping to eradicate poverty.

Some great improvements to agricultural methods in Vietnam owe a great deal to these popular scientific training programs: the development of seafood feeding, the so-called VAC model in agriculture, the revival of traditional carving and embroidery, etc.

Directives and Perspectives

In order to meet great and urgent needs for education and training in the near future, the Vietnamese government has established the following three objectives:

1. Improve the public culture level (Nang Cao Dan Tri). This goal can be compared to the formula "Learning to know, learning to live together" from the well-known report Learning: The Treasure Within (Delors, 1998).

2. Offer human resources training (Dao Tao Nhan Luc).

3. Provide incentives for young people to remain in Vietnam (Boi Duong Nhan Tai), to help build a prosperous nation.

The government of Vietnam acknowledges the important role of open learning and distance education in helping to realize these three objectives, especially the first and the second ones.

National Policy on OL and DE Development in Vietnam

Just after the end of the first Indochinese war (1945-1954), many colleges and universities established units and departments for inservice training and correspondence education. National projects in OL and DE development were carried out from 1996-2000.

* Contributions of state radio and television to the development of DE. Since 1985, state radio and television have teamed up with higher education institutions to develop DE. At National Radio, two channels broadcast four hours a day each of DE high education degree programs and non-degree programs. The production and broadcasting of these programs are entirely financed by the national budget.

The Department of Sciences and Education found that the number of students who attend these programs is increasing from year to year, reaching a total of over 200,000 in the year 2000. At the end of 2000, more than 2,000 DE learners had passed final examinations and graduated with a bachelor's degree; more than 100,000 received credited vocational and professional certificates. From 1996 to 2000, more than 20,000 teachers in remote regions of the country updated their knowledge and skills through DE learning programs.

National TV's channel VTV2 features education and training programs. In cooperation with Hanoi Open University, Hanoi National University, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, and Cantho University, the channel broadcasts 6 to 8 hours a day of science and training programs. Plans to install another channel of VTV2, to be dedicated to DE and OL, are underway.

* Creating institutions to manage and organize DE. In 1990, two open learning institutes (OLI) were created: OLI No. 1 in Hanoi and OLI No. 2 in Ho Chi Minh City. Since 1993, the government established two universities (based on the above-mentioned two OLI) to be in charge of organization and management of open learning and distance education throughout the country: the Hanoi State Open University (HSOU) in Hanoi and the Semi-Public Open University in Ho Chi Minh City.

Presently, more than 60,000 students attend the two open universities. The HSOU's tutorial center network is spreading into 16 provinces and offers certification and / or bachelor's degrees for distance learners in more than 20 specialty areas. From 1995 to 2000, more than 10,000 students graduated from HSOU; they have become the backbone of the skilled workforce in such mountainous and remote regions as Thai Nguyen, Nghean, Quang Ngai, Yenbai, and the Central Highlands.

Parallel with the activities of the two OU, local centers for continuing education in each of the 64 provinces coordinate OL and DE in their respective provinces in cooperation with the universities and other traditional education institutions.

* Developing international relations and cooperation. Exchanges with other countries, especially with those in Southeast Asia, can do much to enhance the educational activity of Vietnamese institutions. Consequently, the government has adopted an open policy by which it encourages the exchange of DE and OL professors, students, and academic materials between Vietnam and other countries.

Vietnamese institutions also have participated in many international cooperative efforts, including: the Consortium of Distance Education Institutions Among French-speaking Countries, the Association of Open Learning in the Asia-Pacific Region, the ACEID-UNESCO PROAP, etc. Bilateral academic relationships were established between Vietnamese education institutions and countries with established DE and OL universities and colleges, including: China, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, the United States, Australia, and several European countries.

In November 1998 and March 2000, the two open universities in Vietnam held important international conferences on OL and DE. International educators, education policymakers, researchers, and specialists from many countries participated.

* Socialization of education and training. The government alone cannot cope with the increasing demand for DE development in Vietnam. In response, a national policy for the socialization of DE development (i.e., cooperation among every organization and economic sector across the whole country to help DE development) has developed. The government will work in concert with many social organizations: the Federation of Youth, the Vietnam Association of Women, the Vietnam Association of Farmers, the Labor National Federation, and the Vietnam General Association of Applied Sciences and Techniques.

Many public and nongovernmental local centers for continuing education were created and installed in provinces, even in some remote districts, in cooperation with institutions of higher and vocational education, which agreed to provide learning opportunities to millions of people. Now, students do not have to leave their homes or their jobs in order to benefit from a training program; they can take classes at a minimal cost (to pay for some materials and exams), about 1/3 or 1/4 of what traditional learners must pay. Many industries, in both the public and private sectors, regularly provide facilities, donate equipment, offer scholarships, and provide jobs for graduated students.

* IT applications in DE development. The government also pays a great deal of attention to information technology applications in DE and OL. Since the 1990s, many learning software packages gained widespread use in Vietnam. Artificial intelligence and teaching learning software were being used in some of the main institutions in Vietnam: the Hanoi University of Technology, National University in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi Open University, and the National Center for IT at the Ministry of Education & Training. Programs were put into use in many of the provinces' tutorial centers for OL and DE.

Currently, however, certain obstacles must be overcome before information technology and the Internet can be used widely for DE and OL. First, information technology equipment is still rare; less than 10 percent of the students at the Faculty of Information Technology-Hanoi State Open University have their own computers. Today, fewer than 100,000 people (of a total of 78 million) have access to the Internet; most of them use public-access computers.

Second, the costs for Internet and telephone services are still high in comparison with the average income. On average, if a student uses the computer one hour per day, he will have to pay 4 or 5 times as much as the tuition fee an on-campus student pays.

Third, language barriers hamper students' use of the Internet. A user needs a certain level of proficiency in the English language in order to log onto Web sites, participate in chat rooms and forums, and generally benefit from the enormous information resources of the Internet.

Therefore, Vietnam needs to develop plans to overcome these barriers in order to incorporate information technology and the Internet into distance education. Presently, the focus remains on designing academic software that is based on recent achievements in the theory of artificial intelligence (Nguyen, 1997; Thai, 2000), and on obtaining appropriate software from the Internet, and then reproducing them in Vietnamese versions. Such software will be used on local area networks or on individually owned computers.

The development of local intranets must be expanded. On such links, the communication would operate only through the central server, free of charge for Internet access. The Center of the Faculties and the Universities should set up units that supervise distance education programs on the Internet and create Web sites and / or home pages to establish connections with well-respected international distance education centers.

Conclusion

The above-mentioned directives and activities show that the Vietnamese people acknowledge very clearly the pressing need for development of OL and DE in their country. We believe that through step-by-step development, in accordance with the national socio-economic situation, and with closer international cooperation, DE and OL in Vietnam will benefit from the latest achievements of the world community. They will then become powerful tools for eradicating poverty and improving the quality of life in rural areas.

References and Resources

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Delors, J. (1998). Learning: The treasure within. Melbourne, Australia: The Australian National Commission for UNESCO.

Gestion des moyens multimedias en FAD: Rapport pedagogique. (1993). Mauritius: Agence de la Cooperation Culturelle et Technique.

Nguyen, T. N., et al. (1996). Fundamental survey and forecasting about manpower resource in Central Vietnam. Danang, Vietnam: Danang University.

Nguyen, T. T. (1997). Artificial intelligence (Nha xuat ban giao duc). Hanoi.

Thai, T. S. (1996). Quelques traits sur les premieres realisations de project national de FAD dans les annees 1995-1996. Rapport annuel au Bureau Regional Asie - Pacifique de l'ACCT. Hanoi, Vietnam: Agence de la Cooperation Culturelle et Technique.

Thai, T.S. (1997). Education in Vietnam in the period 1996-2010: A tool for porverty eradication and social development. The 3th UNESCO-ACEID international conference, Bangkok, Thailand.

Thai, T. S. (1999). Open learning and distance education in Vietnam for the coming century: Needs and perspectives. The 5th UNESCO-ACEID international conference, Bangkok, Thailand.

Thai, T. S. (2000). The role of IT in the future development of OL and DE in Vietnam. National Conference on Distance Education, Hanoi, Vietnam.

Vietnam national project for the development of distance education in the period 1996-2000.

Thai Thanh Son is Professor,
Hanoi University of Technology,
and Dean, Faculty of IT &
Management, Hanoi State Open
University.