The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has just announced a draft Circular regulating the determination of the number of enrollment to gather public opinions. The draft is built to implement the Law on Higher Education (amended) in 2025 and the Law on Vocational Education (amended) in 2025, aiming to standardize and improve training quality, based on conditions on area, facilities and standardized teaching staff.
Compared to current regulations, the draft Circular has many important new points, clearly showing the orientation of enrollment management according to training capacity and actual quality.
Determine the number of students enrolled by training location
The draft stipulates that the number of enrollments is determined separately for the head office and each branch of the training institution. This regulation aims to accurately reflect the capacity to ensure quality at each training location, avoid the situation of concentrating targets at one location that does not meet the conditions, and at the same time improve the efficiency of management and supervision of training quality.
Supplementing and clarifying regulations on associate professors
The draft concretizes the provisions of the 2025 Law on Higher Education on full-time lecturers, allowing participation in determining the number of enrollment with an appropriate coefficient (equal to 1/2 of full-time lecturers of the same level), and clearly stipulates contract conditions, committed time, quantity limits and participation principles, ensuring no duplication of resources and no impact on training quality.
Adjusting the criteria for determining the number of admissions associated with the Standards of higher education institutions
The draft unifies the criteria for determining the number of enrollments with the Circular promulgating the Standard for higher education institutions, which adjusts the converted lecturer coefficient, taking lecturers with doctoral degrees as a standard, encouraging training institutions to improve the quality of staff; uniformly apply the criterion of minimum floor area for training of 2.8 m2/converted student, along with a transition roadmap for training institutions to complete facilities conditions according to regulations.
Determine the number of students enrolled by industry group and training major
The draft shifts from determining by training field to determining by training industry group, and at the same time stipulates mandatory determination by training industry group for health, law, teacher training and doctoral training industries. This regulation aims to ensure the arrangement of a teaching staff suitable for expertise, meeting the specific requirements of each industry and improving training quality.
Adjusting conditions to limit the increase in enrollment quantity associated with training quality
The draft supplements the condition that the number of university-level enrollments must not be increased for majors and groups of majors with a student dropout rate in the first year exceeding 15%, or a low employment rate for graduates, thereby shifting the focus of management from form control to improving the quality of practical training and output efficiency.
Increasing flexibility in enrollment organization
The draft allows the actual number of admissions to exceed the announced number within a limit of no more than 5% for university level and no more than 20% for master's and doctoral level, provided that training capacity is still ensured according to regulations. This regulation creates flexible conditions for training institutions in organizing admissions, while still strictly controlling quality.
