Vietnamese study math… to count money

The paradoxes

Professor Le Tuan Hoa, Head of the Math Institute, said Vietnam’s mathematics is facing a serious labor force crisis. It not only lacks prestigious and accomplished mathematicians, but also lacks professional researchers. This, according to Hoa, is the result of a series of paradoxes existing in the education sector.

First, in developed countries, those graduates who study math can very easily find jobs. In Vietnam, there is a glut of unemployed bachelors in math.

Second, many prestigious universities in the world offer scholarships to talents and give the opportunities to Vietnamese students to study with the best teachers in the world. However, it is very difficult to find the people who can give introduction letters for such courses of study.

Third, in the US and European countries, only ¼ of PhDs in math become the lecturers at universities, while the others are offered opportunities in business. In Vietnam, on the other hand, all the people with doctorates in math would be accepted to become university lecturers.

Associate Professor Bui Xuan Hai from the HCM City University of Natural Sciences also said his school is seriously lacking in lecturers and researchers, mainly because there is no reasonable policy to attract talent.

Hai said the math faculty of the school accepts 300 new students every year. The most outstanding students are advised to study further after graduation to become lecturers.

However, the students all try to study abroad just after a few years at the school, and many of them do not return to Vietnam. The other few return to the school, but then leave because of the low incomes and poor promotion opportunities.

Confirming the serious shortage of mathematicians, Nguyen Huu Du, Managing Director of the Advanced Math Institute, said this is a problem for all schools and research institutes. Du said most of the mathematicians are aged 58-60, while there are very few mathematicians aged 40-58.

Problem lies in unreasonable curricula

Educators pointed out that in many cases, students only decide to study math because they cannot pass the entrance exams to become economists or finance majors. It is understandable that the students, who don’t have passions for math and don’t have talent, don’t like to study further after graduation.

Studying math is not the favorite choice for the majority of Vietnamese students. Nguyen Huy Tung, a 12th grader of Tran Phu High School in Hai Phong, who has been selected to be a member of the Vietnamese team to attend the upcoming 2014 Math Olympiad, said his friends did not think it was a good thing to become a mathematician.“They asked me if derivatives, integrals, or complex numbers can help anything in people’s lives,” Tung said.

“The 12-year math program at general school can only help people… count money, while math should be a subject that helps people think logically,” he added.