The Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) has announced that it will send 39 Vietnamese fellows and visiting scholars to 25 top US universities to begin studies in the upcoming academic year, 2010-2011.

Among the 39 recipients of the full scholarships funded by the US-established organization, 36 fellows will pursue a doctorate or master’s degree in various fields of science, technology and engineering.

With the new cohort, VEF has placed a total of 343 Vietnamese at 76 leading universities in the US since 2003, when the VEF Fellow program began. Since then, 93 VEF fellows have graduated, 52 of them have returned to Vietnam and the rest are doing Academic Training (post-degree employment in their field) or pursuing a Ph.D under other funding.

On the sidelines of an interactive session held in Ho Chi Minh City on June 14, Dr. Nguyen Thi Thanh Phuong, head of VEF representative office in Hanoi, told Thanh Nien Weekly that under the visas granted for the program, all fellows must return to Vietnam for two years after completing their studies.

In addition to this group, the fourth cohort including three scholars will attend postdoctoral programs, focusing on the fields of science and technology, at top US universities for up to 12 months.

The Vietnam Education Foundation was established by the US Congress under the Vietnam Education Foundation Act of 2000 to strengthen US-Vietnam bilateral relations through educational exchanges in science and technology.

VEF is governed by a thirteen-member Board of Directors, including two senators, three representatives, three cabinet members and six members from the US citizenry appointed by the President of United States. The organization receives an annual budget of US$5 million from the US Congress until 2018.

Scientists have found another species of finger lizard endemic to Vietnam in the central coastal province of Khanh Hoa.

Yang Bay – Cyrtodactylus yangbayensis sp. nov. Ngo & Chan, 2010, as the lizard is known, was found at Yang Bay waterfalls by Ngo Van Tri from the Ho Chi Minh City Tropical Biology Institute and Chan Kin Onn from the Institute for Environment and Development, Kebangsaan University, Malaysia.

The finding was published June 4 in Zootaxa, the world’s leading magazine for taxomony, based in New Zealand.

The lizard is around 92.3 millimeters long and lives in humid evergreen forest.

This is the fifteenth lizard species found in Vietnam by Tri and other foreign scientists. Vietnam is home to the most diverse population of finger lizards in the world with around 20 species, most of which are endemic to Vietnam.

Experts call on government to control the quality of joint educational programs with foreign universities

Run of the diploma mill: A man stands next to the name board of the Hong Ha Economics and Technology Intermediate School in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 10, which offers a ten-month MBA program in collaboration with an American university without requiring students to know or learn English.

Unaccredited foreign institutions have flooded Vietnam’s education sector, giving out sub-standard degrees of little value, a problem officials say has to do with lax regulation.

A recent investigation conducted by Thanh Nien revealed that two American institutions, Adam International University and Southwest American University, are offering opaque and low-quality MBA programs in Ho Chi Minh City that do not require any level of English proficiency.

Southwest American University has been partnering with Hong Ha Economics and Technology Intermediate School in District 10 to offer a ten-month MBA program that costs about US$4,000.

Thanh Phuong, an admissions officer at the school, told Thanh Nien that students aren’t required to master any level of English since all of the classes include interpreters. She said the school offers assistance in translating theses into English and also provides students with model essays.

In one class titled “Total Quality Management,” Thanh Nien observed that only 10 out of 30 registered students attended, and that the students were paying no attention to the foreign lecturer.

A Hong Ha student, who works as an English teacher in a nearby province and is registered in the Southwest American University program, said she had no idea what the teacher was lecturing about but still decided to attend because “it sounds very prestigious to have an American MBA.”

Thanh Nien also approached the head of Hong Ha College, who denied that the school was partnering with any American institution.

Thanh Nien also found that another MBA program offered by Adam International University in partnership with the Institute of Accounting and Business Management in District 10 was of the same low-standards. Students aren’t required to present any credentials, and pay US$4,000 for a 10-month course. Many have been allowed to sign up and start the course one month late having missed all previous classes.

According to Mark Ashwill, former country director of the Institute for International Education-Vietnam and currently managing director of Capstone Vietnam, a human resources development company, neither “university” is accredited.

According to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, a US association of 3,000 degree-granting colleges and universities that recognizes 60 institutional and programmatic accrediting organizations, the two schools, located in California and Georgia respectively, are considered private, for-profit corporations.

Professor Nguyen Hoi Nghia, director of the Department of Academic Affairs at the Vietnam National University (VNU)-HCMC, said there are many similarly questionable MBA joint programs of dubious quality in the country.

“It’s quite clear that students won’t gain enough knowledge in these kinds of MBA programs. Degrees awarded by unaccredited foreign schools can be used in Vietnam but are absolutely worthless abroad,” he said. “We suggest the authorities check up on these two institutions.”

However, some educators and experts fear that the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) does not have the capacity to inspect all of these programs since there are just too many of them.

Statistics from MoET’s International Education Department show that there are about 200 joint programs operated by nearly 50 Vietnamese institutions with more than 100 foreign counterparts, ranging from college to Ph.D. level.

Seventy-four of the programs operated by major universities such as schools under the Vietnam National University system or Thai Nguyen University, Hue University, and Da Nang University do not need to receive licenses from MoET. The rest must be licensed by the ministry.

Nguyen Xuan Vang, head of the International Education Department at MoET, said most of the licensed programs advertise their license numbers in promotional material.

In a previous interview with Thanh Nien, Professor Pham Quang Minh from the VNU-HCMC said joint education programs with foreign partners were booming in a bad way. “The unwelcomed come, the welcomed don’t,” he said.

He suggested MoET establish a separate entity to license foreign institutions wanting to set up branch campuses or start joint programs here.

Dr. Vu Thi Phuong Anh, director of the VNU-HCMC’s Center for Educational Testing and Quality

Assessment, said those who aim to attend these joint programs should research all the information about the foreign schools and its Vietnamese partners. Normally, major Vietnamese universities partner with credible foreign universities only, she said.

Dr. Anh said the VNU-HCMC only approves a partner school after careful assessment from a committee that includes the vice president, the head of academic affairs and international education departments along with the Center for Education Testing and Quality Assessment.

“Higher education is like buying a luxurious item. You really have to study the item carefully before making the decision about its quality.”

Ashwill said a disproportionate number of unaccredited schools in Vietnam are based in the US since they can take advantage of a federalist system with 50 states, each with a different set of laws, rules and regulations related to higher education institutions.

“It’s my hope that the [education] ministry and other branches of government make every effort to approve only officially accredited programs that benefit students, host institutions and Vietnam as whole,” he said.

“Vietnam can ill afford to squander precious resources, which inevitably results when programs award degrees that are not worth the paper on which they are printed.”

Even though the majority of Vietnamese students at international schools plan to study at overseas universities, some worry that if they cannot do so, they will not be able to gain entry into Vietnamese universities due to differences in curricula.

The number of Vietnamese children studying at international schools in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City is rising. Parents want their children to have better conditions for learning a foreign language, developing creativity and gaining essential knowledge and skills for university abroad, all in an international environment.

Nguyen Mai Ngoc, a 12th grade student at a French school in Hanoi, said most of the Vietnamese students in her class want to study at universities abroad, but high accommodation fees and living costs are factors that can prevent them from doing so, unless they win a scholarship.

And, getting a scholarship is no easy task. Students must have records of good behavior and excellent results in all quarters of academic years from tenth to 12th grade, and score 16 out of 20 points for all subjects at the high school final exam, Ngoc said.

Last year, less than half of 12th-grade Vietnamese students in her school received the much needed scholarship to attend university abroad. This year, Ngoc is the only one among more than ten local students in her class eligible to apply for a scholarship. She has studied at the school for seven years.

Those left behind are faced with attending a local university. However, differences in curricula and the limited Vietnamese language skills of local international school students make it difficult for them to take the entrance exam for local universities.

International schools do not spend much time teaching their students Vietnamese, leading some local students to speak their adopted foreign language better than their native language.

Cao Quynh Loc, who has studied at an international school for the past five years, says, “If we don’t go to university abroad, we have limited choice for further education here.”

“We also cannot move to study in local high schools after many years of studying at an international school because it is difficult to fall in line with life there, as well as follow the curriculum.”

In case tenth grade student Loc cannot get a scholarship to study abroad, she is preparing to take the entrance exam for a foreign language university in Vietnam.

“I have no problem when it comes to the foreign language, but it is difficult to do the subjects of math and literature [at the university entrance exam],” she said. “There are some major differences between the curricula of the two subjects, especially literature.”

To prepare, Loc has read many textbooks from local schools for reference. She plans to have private tuition when she is in the 12th grade to help her prepare for the university entrance exam. Many other Vietnamese students do the same.

Nguyen Tuan Hoang, an 11th grade student from a French school in Hanoi said his friends from local schools help him choose textbooks and reference books, and explain things that he finds difficult.

“Vietnamese books focus on theory, helping me to reinforce logical thinking, while French books lean on practice, and concretize complicated concepts, helping me understand issues more quickly,” he said. “Because they complement each other, I will have a profound knowledge.”

Not sure whether he can go abroad to study at university or not, Hoang takes private Vietnamese lessons so as to better understand the local textbooks he needs to prepare for the university entrance exam next year. He wants to study natural sciences, basic physics or economics at university.

Ngoc said the curriculum of 12th grade students at her international school is heavy, so she has no time for private lessons. She learns about the curriculum at local schools by asking her friends and reading reference books. She used to take private lessons with a Vietnamese teacher two to three times a week when she was in seventh to tenth grade.

Ngoc said if she did not receive a scholarship to study overseas, she will spend a further year studying in order to pass the entrance exam for university in Vietnam.

TOPIO Dio, the first server robot developed by a Vietnamese company, made its appearance at the leading automation trade show Automatica in Germany last week.

The human-shaped robot, 1.25 meters tall and weighing 45 kilograms, can serve food and drinks at restaurants and bars. It moves on three wheels and can avoid obstacles in its path, the VnExpress website reported Saturday.

TOPIO Dio was developed by the TOSY Company, based on technology that the company previously used for TOPIO, a robot that could play table tennis.

Ho Vinh Hoang, TOSY General Director, said last year that his company was determined to bring Vietnamese robots to foreign markets even though it’s not an easy task.

Automatica 2010, a four-day event which ended Friday, attracted 700 companies from the global automation industry. Approximately 31,000 people visited the show.

Wildlife At Risk (WAR) has expanded their postcard awareness campaign with three new rare animals in need of protection following the success of the endangered Rhino postcards released early this month.

The organization is handing out postcards featuring endangered species in Vietnam to raise awareness of the perils of wildlife trafficking.

The new postcards, emblazoned with images of elephants, tigers and bears, are being handed out for free to anyone interested,

the Ho Chi Minh City-based organization said in a press release on June 21.

Each postcard includes information about the species geared toward making readers think about the conservation of creatures that are on the brink of extinction, WAR said.

“Only if we act immediately, will our children and grand children observe the rhino, elephant, tiger, bear and hundreds of other endangered species in the wild with their bare eyes.

Let’s start by spending one minute remembering the innocent animals that have already been slaughtered and think seriously about protecting these species,” said Do Thi Thanh Huyen, Wildlife Education Coordinator for WAR.

WAR is distributing the free postcards at its office: 202/10 Nguyen Xi Street, Ward 26, Binh Thanh District, HCMC until June 30.

The organization reported that more than 4,000 bears, mostly Moon Bears, are being held captive for bile exploitation in Vietnam.

The situation is more critical for the tigers as there are only about 30 Indochinese tigers left in the wild due to intensive hunting, trading and deforestation. Scientists have warned that wild Indochinese tiger could be extinct in Vietnam by the next Tiger Year, or 2022, if we do not act immediately to protect the tiger.

According to WAR, the elephant postcard is printed in memory of the seven elephants that died in Vinh Cuu Nature Reserve in the southern Dong Nai Province over the past few months.

According to the Management Board of the Nature Reserve, and many conservation specialists, the elephants were poisoned by the farmers when they came near crops seeking food. Local authorities are investigating the cause of the elephants’ deaths.

In the past decade, populations of the Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus) in Vietnam have been declining dramatically due to deforestation and the illegal ivory trade.

WAR’s distribution of wildlife postcards follows a similar campaign launched on June 7 to distribute postcards printed in memory of a Javan Rhino that died in Vietnam’s Cat Tien National Park in April to raise awareness of wildlife conservation efforts.

A director of a museum in northern Vietnam worried his institution does not have the means to properly preserve stone and pottery relics dating up to four thousand years back on display there.

Vang Ngoc Du, director of the Lai Chau Museum in the mountainous province of the same name, said Wednesday that the 18 relics were working tools used during the turn from New Stone Age to the Copper Age.

The items include axes, hoes, arrows and graters found along the Da River in 2006 by local gold miner Dinh Van Quyn.

The relics were brought to the museum by Lai Chau cultural officials early this month.

In May, the museum found more than 16,500 relics at 11 excavation spots along the Da River. They are being kept for examination and information about them will be published in October.

But Du said the museum lacks the facilities to properly preserve relics.

Some 234 marine species are facing extinction in Vietnam, according to a new atlas of rare sea organisms.

The atlas, published by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development"s Seafood General Department on Monday, categorizes several species as “extinct in the wild” or “critically endangered."

Chu Tien Vinh, deputy chief of the department, told a press conference held to release the book that sea species were significant contributors to Vietnam’s economy. But he said too many were currently under the threat of extinction due to the over-fishing of Vietnamese waters and other reasons.

Vietnam is now home to some 130,000 boats exploiting aquatic resources, but Vinh said it would be difficult to cut down on the number without crushing local fishermen"s livelihoods.

He said the only solution was to protect the resources by breeding sea creatures sustainably.

Also at the press conference, the department announced two plans to zone 45 new sea reserves through 2020 with the total investment of VND545 billion (US$28.7 million).

A vocational school in Ho Chi Minh City is offering students MBA degrees from an American university without having to learn a single word of English. 

Thanh Phuong from the Academic Affairs Department at Hong Ha Economics and Technology Intermediate School said the school offered Master of Business Administration courses from Southwest American University, an online school based in Buena Park, California.

Academic certificates and degrees earned at Hong Ha are ranked lower than college-level degrees.

Phuong said students don’t need to have good English to get into the program.

She said lecturers are foreigners with doctoral degrees who speak in English and use interpreters to teach.

“And you don’t have to worry about the final theses as we have samples you can use… And you can also write in Vietnamese and have the paper translated.”

Each 10-month weekend degree program costs US$4,000 a student. Each subject is learned for one month, ending with students submitting a 20-30 page thesis in English.

Phuong said if students are too busy or too far away to attend classes, Hong Ha will give them sample theses “for reference.”

Around 10 of 30 registered students attended a Total Quality Management class observed by Thanh Nien in late May.

The lecturer introduced himself as Fazli Ku and said he came from Southwest America University.

The students did not pay attention to the lecture, which was translated, and sat chatting in groups instead. When the interpreter asked if there were any questions at the end of class, no one cared enough to speak up.

Many of the students are college and university lecturers in provinces around Vietnam.

A student only identified as T. said “I’ve paid so I have to attend classes so I don’t regret spending my money. But I don’t understand anything. Most of the time, I search for information on the Internet for my thesis.”

“You simply go to the Internet and search for the information in Vietnamese, then cut and paste it into a complete thesis and have it translated by Google into English,” she said.

Another student, who asked not to be identified, joked “after the course, you will be a master of cut and paste.”

“Lecturers know the English competence of students," said Phuong.  "As long as the thesis mentions the subject matter, you will pass.”

Nguyen Hoi Nghia, head of the College and Graduate Department at Vietnam National University-HCMC, said master"s degree should not be based on such little training and that investigators should inspect the school soon.

He said similar stories in which Vietnamese schools "cooperated" with foreign ones to offer shady or bogus degrees were too common.

Hong Ha students said the school"s principle Tran Duc Tuyen had told them they were receiving MBA training.

But during an interview with Thanh Nien, Tuyen denied that, saying he only introduced students to Southwest American University"s remote MBA courses.

Government officials call for renewed efforts to combat an epidemic of child-related injuries

Children fishing at Dau Tieng Lake in the southern Tay Ninh Province, some 100 kilometers northwest of Ho Chi Minh City. Experts worry that child injuries could hinder the country"s socio-development goals for years to come.

At a conference held earlier this week in Hanoi, authorities called attention to one of Vietnam’s most glaring problems: child safety.

“We have children who must collect scrap metal for their livelihood and end up getting killed or injured by unexploded ordinance,” said Nguyen Trong An, deputy head of the Department for Protection and Care of Children.

“We have children who have to cross makeshift bridges to go to schools. It’s time to acknowledge that child injuries could push families [and the whole nation] into poverty.”

An cautioned that Vietnam is in danger of failing to meet its Millennium Development Goal of reducing the under-five child mortality rate by two thirds.

Experts like An are pushing for a greater investment in a new nine-year program aimed at preventing child injuries. So far, government efforts to combat the issue have fallen flat.

Nearly 8,000 children and adolescents in Vietnam died from unintentional injuries in 2007. The causes included traffic accidents, poisonings and falls.

In April 2010 UNICEF and the Alliance for Safe Children released data indicating that child injuries account for almost half of the roughly 1.4 million child deaths recorded each year.

Water was still Vietnam’s greatest killer. In December of 2008, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that 10 children drowned every day in Vietnam. Drowning killed nearly six times as many children as communicable diseases, the study found. Had the injuries been prevented, Vietnam’s under-five mortality rate would have fallen by almost 40 percent.

A government campaign to reduce child injuries, launched in 2002, failed to have a substantive impact.

According to Pham Viet Cuong, director of the Center for Injury Policy, the $2 million effort did not manage to reduce the rate of injuries for children in many categories. “On many levels public awareness of this issue is still quite low,” Cuong said. “In many localities, authorities and officials lack extensive knowledge about child injury prevention.”

Cuong suggested establishing a national committee to deal with child injuries. He further advised the implementation of a centralized data system that could track child injuries and death rates across every locality.

Tran Quang Quy, deputy minister of Education and Training, said the ministry is looking to create mandatory swimming lessons in schools. Quy is also considering a curriculum that would teach kids how to prevent water accidents.

Regional officials seemed eager for the help.

In the southern Bac Lieu Province, drowning has killed more than 40 children since 2006. The province has recorded nearly 5,500 juvenile injuries in the same time period.

Vu Van Hoa, deputy chairman of Bac Lieu Province People’s Committee - the local government - said many parents in the region have migrated to big cities seeking employment. In many cases, they’ve left their children in the care of elderly relatives.

“All of our efforts to educate the public failed to reduce accident rates,” Hoa said. “Child injuries have caused major consequences in the lives of many families and yet, we still don’t have a national program to deal with this issue.”

The Hanoi-based National Institute of Mental Health Wednesday said they are treating a 17-year-old boy who was hospitalized on June 12 for online game addiction.

The eleventh-grader’s father said his son, N.A.D., had since the end of May, when his summer vacation began, spent all the time playing games without sleeping and eating properly.

They sent him to the institute as he showed symptoms of fatigue, short-temper and weight loss, the fathers said, adding that D. had started playing games when he was in secondary school.

Nguyen Minh Tuan, deputy chief of the institute, said several patients, mainly students, have been hospitalized recently with the same symptoms.

They were prone to anxiety attacks and become irritable if they don’t play the online games, he said.

Twenty-year-old Tran Huyen Huong is a Vet. School drop-out with a passion for felines. Last month, she opened the first coffee shop for cat lovers in Hanoi, called the “Ailu Coffee Cat.”

The small cafe, located at 4 Thuy Khue Street in Tay Ho District, was modeled after Tokyo cafes that cater to cat fanciers.

For Huong, it’s good enough that Ailu is now becoming a popular spot among local teenagers. She has promoted the business solely through Facebook.

“I’ve loved cats since I was a kid,” Huong said. “It took me only a month to open this shop,”

The two-story shop normally houses about 20 cats, which Huong personally bought, raised or adopted. The shop sometimes accepts strays.

Occasionally, it closes for cleaning (lots of cat hair) and vet visits. Huong sees about 150 customers a day. People come in to play with the cats; others bring in their own cats to be socialized.

Vu Quynh Thu, a 12th-grader, said she often comes here to release stress after studying. “Watching all these cats helps me relax,” she said.

In the upcoming months, Huong said she might organize a cat competition. “I have absolutely no plans to compete with other coffee shops,” she said. “If people like it, they will come.”

Just a month after its opening, Ailu has already been featured on national television and numerous online news stories.

A high school student in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong committed suicide after she didn’t receive a confirmation slip to attend the college entrance exam.

Nguyen Thi Hoc, 18, was sent home from Lam Dong General Hospital on Wednesday when doctors said they couldn"t save her. Hoc drank weed killer three days ago.

The Tan Ha High School graduate wrote in a letter she left for her family that the day of the first college entrance exam was near, yet she still hadn"t received the confirmation slip from Da Lat university, where she had applied.

She went to the university and they didn’t have her application, the letter said.

In Vietnam, high school students send college exam applications to their school or the university they plan to attend. The university replies by mail confirming that the student can attend the exam and informing them of where it is to take place. If the high school receives the applications, it sends them to the college and upon receipt of confirmation from the college, the school sends it on to the students.

Hoc’s family said the girl had left her application at her high school but the school said she never submitted an application, the local news website VietNamNet reported Wednesday.

Nguyen Duy Trinh, principle of Tan Ha High School, told the website Ngoc’s family came to the school ten days ago to ask if anything had been sent to Ngoc from the college. The school officials checked carefully but Hoc was not among the list of students that left their applications at the school.

Trinh said over 500 students had submitted their applications at the school with proof of signature.

The school also issued students with a receipt that allows them to attend the exam even if they don"t receive any confirmation from their chosen university, he said.

Nguyen Dinh Hao, vice principle of Da Lat University, also told the website via phone that they never received Hoc"s application.

Nguyen Ba Hi, director of Lam Dong General Hospital, said Hoc had been transferred to them in a critical condition suffering from difficulties in breathing, low blood pressure, liver and kidney failure, and a damaged digestive system.

Hoc had drunk Para Quat, a very poisonous weed killer that Vietnam is yet to have a proper antidote for, said doctor Phan Thach Khue at the hospital.

In 2009, the hospital received around 40 patients that had ingested Para Quat and they all died.