The current scale of university admissions in Vietnam—over 550,000 students across 200 universities in 2024—is “very unreasonable,” Dang Viet Xo, Principal of the Vietnam College of Industry and Trade has told an education conference, VN Express has reported. University education should remain elite, and lower-tier entrants should instead be directed to vocational pathways, with the imbalance hurting vocational school enrolments, he said.

Other key points of note in the article include:

Phan Thi Le Thu, Vice Principal of Far East College, said there is a cultural bias toward university degrees and that parents and students often ignore whether majors are suitable, instead sending students to any university regardless of quality.
Hoang Minh Son, Deputy Minister of Education and Training, warned against proposing legal limits on university access and rejected the idea of using poor university graduate outcomes to elevate vocational education.
Son also cautioned vocational schools against marketing themselves as “worker producers,” arguing it diminishes their image. Instead, he called for clearer articulation of student benefits—future jobs and income—to attract more enrolments.
Policy changes ahead: A unified admissions system for vocational schools is in development to streamline applications and reduce overlaps. In 2024, 1,900 vocational institutions recruited 2.43 million students, with engineering and tech fields dominating.