“More Vietnamese high school graduates now prefer studying abroad”
by Le Phuong via “Xinua News“
HO CHI MINH CITY, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) – While most Vietnamese high school students are busy preparing for the country’s tough college entrance examinations, quite a few of their classmates are also in the thick of preparations for their coming trips abroad to study in foreign colleges.
Just a couple of weeks ahead of the new academic school year starting September, 18-year-old Lan Anh, who just graduated from a famous high school in capital Hanoi, has already packed her luggage and attended farewell parties with relatives and friends before her coming trip to the United States to pursue her college studies.
“Going abroad to study was my dream since I was in the primary grades and I have strived hard to realize my dream. Of course, without the financial support of my family, I would not be able to do that,” Anh told Xinhua recently .
Anh said that with a diploma from an American college, she would find it easy to get a good job in Vietnam or in the United States if she would be allowed to stay there after graduation.
Nguyen Quoc Hung, a native in Hoai Duc District here, chose to take medicine in a college in China for his post-graduate study.
“Members of three generations in my family have practiced traditional medicine. My father is now running a clinic selling herbal medicines and treating patients with physical therapy such as acupuncture. I want to follow his footsteps,” Hung said.
He said he decided to study at a medical college in China because as far as he knows China is where Oriental medicine has been practiced since ancient times– the cradle of traditional medicine.
In recent years, the number of Vietnamese high school graduates going abroad for college has been on the rise.
Statistics from the Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) showed that as of the end of 2013, there were more than 115,000 Vietnamese students studying in 47 countries and territories, a ten-fold increase from the previous ten years. Among them, 90 percent have paid for their own foreign studies.
The United States, China and Australia are on top the list of countries where Vietnamese students want to study. Overall, about 34 percent of the overseas Vietnamese students are studying in Asian countries and nearly 40 percent in the US and Australia, according to MoET statistics .
Education officials attributed the rising number of overseas Vietnamese students to their parents’ improved living conditions as well as the local education sector’s further global integration.
According to Nguyen Xuan Vang, Head of MoET’s Overseas Training Department, in recent years, Vietnam’s education sector has expanded its relations with foreign counterparts. The sector has also adopted measures that encourage students to study abroad, which is in line with the policies of the Communist Party and the state to promote global integration, the MoET said.
Every year, thousands of students go abroad for study using their own money and many of them, when they returned home, have contributed greatly to the country’s socio-economic development.
Every year, the MoET grants scholarships for deserving Vietnamese high school graduates to study abroad under strict selection process, including the grantees’ pledge to return home to serve the country after their education abroad.
Le Hong Ly, Director of the Tri Thuc (Knowledge) Center for Consultancy of Overseas Study, told Xinhua that over the past five years the number of her clients has risen.
“With improved living conditions, many well-off families in Vietnam are ready to invest in their children’s overseas education with the hope that they would acquire better education from advanced countries and would have a brighter future,” Le Hong Ly said. . . . .
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