Van Lang University in Ho Chi Minh City planned to offer some health courses including the general medicine and traditional medicine in 2021. Before, the school have just offered dental course, nursing course, pharmaceutical courses.
The University of Technology in HCMC followed suit to open new faculties comprising of medical testing techniques and nursing.
Lately on December 30, 2020, Hong Bang University announced its enrolment plan with 16 new faculties including eight health ones. Noticeably, beforehand, students of the school had enrolled on courses of dental. Associate Professor Ho Thanh Phong, Principal of the school , said that the school has decided to run degree health courses because of the society’s growing demand of doctors and nurses.
One year ago, many universities and colleges in the southern region also launched health courses despite the Ministry of Education and Training’s tightened policies on such courses in 2019. Also in 2019, Nguyen Tat Thanh University opened Medicine faculty while the University of Technology in the Southern Province of Dong Nai simultaneously opened medical testing techniques and nursing.
In 2018, the Ministry allowed the Nam Can Tho University to offer the general medicine training. In 2020, VinUni School was greenlighted to open medicine course by cooperating with the US-based Pennsylvania. In 2019, the Medicine Faculty of the National University of Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City also admitted students into the two new faculties including Pharmaceutical and Dental.
Dr. Hoang Ngoc Vinh, a member of the National Committee on Education and Training Renovation’s consultation team for the 2016-2021 period said that the Ministry has tightened enrolment into degree health courses since 2019 by setting qualification score because several schools have admitted students with too low scores.
Additionally, the Ministry and the Ministry of Health sent some doctors and professors to pay visits to some schools to check the teaching quality. Any schools at low training quality will be requested to stop enrolment.
Agreeing with Dr. Vinh’s opinion, Head of the Training room of the HCMC University of Medicine Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Khoi said that universities must ensure facilities and teams of lecturers when opening more health faculties. Moreover, quality of university entrants and graduates must meet the requirements of the training course.
A former deputy principal of the University of Medicine in HCMC said that the number of workforce in the health sector is relatively low. Therefore, private universities have offered different courses of health training; however, quality of these courses have not been tested strictly.
