Many universities are preparing to increase tuition fees, up to 20%

The Academy of Finance plans to apply new tuition fees for new students in the 2023-2024 school year from 22 - 24 million VND for training programs under the standard program (an increase of 10 - 20% compared to the previous school year). Tuition fees for high-quality programs will increase slightly to 48 - 50 million VND.

In 2022 and 2023, the University of Electricity will not increase tuition fees according to government regulations to support students and parents in difficult circumstances. The school will maintain a stable tuition fee of 14 million VND/school year for full-time training majors in Economics and nearly 16 million VND for Engineering. Next school year, tuition fees for these two majors will be nearly 16 and 18 million VND respectively, an increase of 14%.

The Academy of Journalism and Communication plans to charge VND500,000/credit for the general education program for the 2023-2024 student cohort (an increase of VND60,000/credit compared to last year). Similarly, the high-quality program will also increase to VND1.5 million/credit, compared to the old level of VND1.3 million.

National Economics University's tuition fee for the 2022-2023 school year for the regular standard program ranges from 15 million VND to 20 million VND/school year. Next school year, the school's tuition fee is expected to be from 16 million VND to 22 million VND/year.

The Faculty of Medicine, Ho Chi Minh City National University also plans to adjust tuition fees for the 2023-2024 school year for 5 training majors. Of which, the tuition fees for Medicine, Pharmacy, Dentistry, and Traditional Medicine are 55 million VND/school year, an increase of 6 million VND compared to 2022. The tuition fees for Nursing are 40 million VND/school year (an increase of 3 million VND compared to last year).

Polytechnic University (National University)City HOhChyesBright) is expected to collect a tuition fee of 30 million VND/year for the standard program. This fee is an increase of 2.5 million VND compared to last year. It is known that the school's highest expected tuition fee is up to more than 800 million VND/year for the international transfer program.

University of Food IndustryTPHOhChyesBrightExpected to increase tuition by up to 10% for upcoming courses.

Banking UniversityTPHOhChyesBrightThe expected tuition fee for the 2023-2024 school year is 7,050,000 VND/semester (an increase of 800,000 VND compared to the previous year). For a high-quality full-time university program, the expected tuition fee is around more than 18 million VND/semester.

University of EconomicsTPHOhChyesBrightIt is expected to increase tuition fees from 785,000 VND/credit (2022-2023 school year) to 940,000 VND/credit for the standard program in 2023-2024. For English-taught programs, tuition fees will increase 1.4 times compared to courses taught in Vietnamese.

Dr. Le Viet Khuyen, Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges, said that the simultaneous increase in tuition fees by many schools means that they may eliminate capable students who do not have the financial means.

When facilities are better, the quality of training also improves, but increasing tuition fees needs to take into account the financial capacity of learners.

According to Mr. Khuyen, it is difficult to compare tuition fees of domestic universities with those of foreign universities, but it is necessary to look back at the average income of people today compared to other countries in the region and the world.

“I think that the way of thinking that if you want to increase quality, you have to increase costs, and if you want to increase costs, you have to increase tuition fees is not the right way of thinking. The Ministry of Education and Training needs to reconsider specific fields, especially schools in the fields of medicine, pharmacy, economics...”, said Dr. Le Viet Khuyen.

According to Decree No. 81 of the Government regulating the mechanism for collecting and managing tuition fees for public educational institutions and policies on tuition exemption and reduction, support for learning costs; service prices in the field of education and training, in 2022 - 2023, the tuition fee ceiling for public higher education institutions that have not yet covered their regular expenses ranges from 12 - 24.5 million VND/school year.

However, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government requested to keep the tuition fees for the 2022-2023 school year the same as the previous school year at all levels from kindergarten to university. The State will provide compensation for tuition exemption and reduction according to the tuition fee ceiling for the 2021-2022 school year stipulated in Decree 81.

According to VTC