The fact that Thu Dau Mot University (Binh Duong) illegally collected tuition fees of up to 37 billion VND in two school years is causing a stir in public opinion.
According to the school's leaders, the reason for the excess collection comes from "inconsistency in understanding and applying state regulations".
This reason does not sound very convincing for a university, which trains human resources for the country, but does not have a clear understanding of financial regulations, especially when the amount of money wrongly collected is up to tens of billions of dong.
However, if it stops at the mistake of misunderstanding the regulations, it can be considered a systemic error, but what is more blameworthy is the way this school handles the consequences.
Although in the document sent to Thu Dau Mot University, the State Audit requested the school to refund to students (in case of failure to refund, it must pay to the budget) the tuition fees collected in excess of the prescribed level.
However, instead of refunding the students - who had to pay the wrong tuition fees - Thu Dau Mot University chose to pay this amount into the state budget.
This action is no different from "confiscating to the public fund" an amount of money that does not belong to you, which is unacceptable and too unfair to students.
The reason given by the school leaders to justify not refunding the money to the students is because "some students have graduated". However, this only reflects the school's lack of responsibility and lack of initiative in solving the problem, because in the current digital age, publicly announcing to students, including those who have graduated, is not at all a difficult task.
Even just an online announcement on the website or social network, surely former students or their relatives will come to ask for a refund.
Paying the wrongly collected money into the budget is an easy and safe solution for the school, but it is not a fair and reasonable solution for the students and their families.
The story of the incorrect collection of 37 billion VND in tuition fees at Thu Dau Mot University reminds us of a very bitter "summary" of Associate Professor, Dr. Le Quang Son - Vice President of Da Nang University, at the 2022-2023 school year summary conference.
Mr. Son said that universities are "cannibalizing themselves" by investing too much effort to expand training scale to get money.
In this process of "cannibalizing themselves", if universities only collect the right amount of fees, it will be an unbearable burden for the majority of people.
On the other hand, Thu Dau Mot University also collected more and collected more incorrectly, increasing by 1.5 times with a total amount of incorrect collection of 37 billion VND. How can the people bear it?
The correct and only solution in this case is that Thu Dau Mot University must return the entire amount of 37 billion VND that was wrongly collected to students, there is no other way!
