Vietnam Maritime University: International Cooperation Creates Springboard for Education Development

In my opinion, the Vietnamese education has achieved many important accomplishments in recent years. The education scale and school network are developed to better serve the social demand. The quality of education and training levels at all grades are upgraded significantly. In addition, all provinces and cities nationwide have been recognised to complete the cause of illiteracy eradication, primary education universalisation, etc.

 

However, the Vietnamese education system has certain drawbacks. The national education system structure is not synchronised and interconnected from grade to grade and level to level. Vocational education has not been adequately cared. Another problem in the Vietnamese education system is unfocused investment for university development. There are a lot of universities but hardly any of them has deep professional expertise. Vietnam now has 202 universities and 218 colleges but a very few of them are specialised training units.

 

Vietnam Maritime University is the largest university training unit of the transportation sector. It functions as a supplier of human resources for maritime economic development. The university is one of pioneering training units in the country and has initially created breakthrough achievements in international cooperation, demand-oriented training, training cooperation, scientific research application, and mass production of scientific products it has created. Not only being a positive contributor to the national education and training development, Vietnam Marine University also actively takes part in international education, training and scientific cooperation. Since November 2002, the university has been recognised as a full member of the he Association of Maritime Education and Training Institutions in Asia - Pacific (AMETIAP), which is now Global Maritime and Training Association (GlobalMET). Specifically, in August 2004, the university was officially admitted to the International Association of Maritime Universities (IAMU).

 

Vietnam Maritime University plans to build five affiliated universities specialised in maritime economy. It will also set up some departments and scientific centres from existing departments (environment technology, physical training, maritime defence). Besides, it will build some national experiment centres which will be managed and operated by scientific and technological companies.

Vietnam Maritime University is proud to be one of 6 units to receive non-refundable aid from the Government of India in accordance with the Vietnam software industry development programme. The US$444,605 project was carried out from September 2004 to June 2008. The school made greatest effort to implement the project and achieved all objectives as expected. The project provided a modern IT network system. The university sent teachers and specialists to professional training courses in India. We sent 16 specialists to short-term courses and six to long-term courses in India, including seven masters of information technology. The project has actually given a facelift to IT training at Vietnam Maritime University. As a result, from a low IT profile school, the Vietnam Maritime University emerged as a bright star in IT sector. Its students won a lot of high prizes at national and international IT contests. In 2011, the university was the first time on the Top 10 University at the 20^th Vietnam IT Student Olympiad and ACM/ICPC Vietnam.

 

I have some suggestions as follows. India needs to boost its popularity in Vietnam. It should also create conditions and opportunities for intelligentsia of both countries to learn and work in each other country, support training units to teach advanced knowledge, exchange professors and students to create high-quality human resources which will master knowledge and technology in IT, shipbuilding and maritime