Vietnam needs a comprehensive investment strategy and supportive policies to encourage universities to invest in the education of High-Quality STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) professionals, thereby laying the groundwork for the country's scientific and technological advancement, educational experts have said. STEM is considered a highly promising field. However, in Vietnam, the proportion of university students in STEM-related fields is relatively low compared to other countries in the region and Europe, especially in fields such as Science and Mathematics.
According to the Ministry of Education and Training, the number of university students studying STEM fields in Việt Nam is only about 55 students per ten thousand people. The percentage of university students in STEM fields has ranged from 27 percent to 30 percent of all university students in Vietnam in recent years. In 2021, this rate reached approximately 28.7 percent. This percentage was much lower than some other countries in the region and Europe, such as Singapore (46 percent), Malaysia (50 percent), South Korea (35 percent), Finland (36 percent) and Germany (39 percent).
In particular, the percentage of university students studying Natural Sciences and Mathematics was approximately 1.5 percent, which was one-third that of Finland, one-fourth of South Korea, and one-fifth of Singapore and Germany. Furthermore, the postgraduate STEM education in Vietnam is quite modest compared to developed countries, and it constitutes a very small proportion of the total scale of education across all fields. The ministry’s 2021 statistics showed that the number of postgraduate students in STEM fields was only 2.2 per ten thousand people, which was roughly one-seventh of South Korea and Israel, less than one-tenth of Singapore, one-fifteenth of the European Union average, and one-twentieth of Germany and Finland.
In terms of the total scale of education at various levels within STEM fields, postgraduate education in 2021 accounted for only about 3.6 percent, which was lower than the overall average of 5.6 percent across all fields. Meanwhile, in South Korea, postgraduate education in STEM fields was at 9.4 percent, Israel at 16.3 percent, Finland at 27.8 percent, Germany at 34.4 percent, and the European Union at 33.7 percent.
According to the analysis of a group of experts from Thai Nguyen University, Vietnam needed a roadmap to increase the proportion of students studying STEM fields to around 60 percent. The Ministry of Education and Training should enhance career counseling and guidance for high school students, and implement appropriate mechanisms and policies to attract students to study STEM fields in the future. Dr. Trịnh Quang Khai from the University of Transportation pointed out that the State's investment in science and technology in the past several years has not increased, remaining at approximately 3.7 percent while in other regional countries, the rate ranged from 5-10 percent.
The State's policies in the field of science and technology have not offered many incentives to promote the development of science and technology in universities. Therefore, to genuinely address this issue, it was essential to mobilize resources to collaborate in creating a science and technology market, providing a platform and motivation for the development of Vietnamese scientists
