HCM City (VNS/VNA) - Many universities in HCM City offer programmes in English toenable their students to communicate in that language when they work elsewherein the ASEAN Economic Community, within which the bloc’s nationals can freelymigrate.

According to surveys done by recruitment companies, many enterprises complainthat Vietnamese employees lack English skills.

They recommend that higher education establishments should strive to improvetheir students’ English.

More and more universities in the city are offering training programmes inEnglish to address this problem.

The International University under the Vietnam National University-HCM Cityhas, in fact, switched completely to English, the only public general universityin Vietnam to do so.

A survey by the university on enterprises’ satisfaction with its students lastyear showed a level of 94 percent.

The HCM City University of Technology offered its programme in English in 2006.The number has since increased to more than 30.

According to the university, the programmes aim to improve the competitivenessof Vietnamese engineers in the ASEAN labour market and meet the growing demandsof companies.

They include computer science, computer engineering, automative engineering,and others.

Ton Duc Thang University teaches 11 majors in English.

Many private universities in the city also offer many programmes in English.

Hoa Sen University has programmes called the Hoa Sen Five Star Plus withclassrooms having only 25 students and teaching in English. The programmesinclude the Vatel International Programme in cooperation with France’s VatelHotel & Tourism Business School and others in marketing, logistics andsupply chain management and hospitality administration.

Hong Bang International University will launch nine more international trainingprogrammes in English in medicine, pharmacology, nursing, architecture,economic laws, finance-banking, industrial management, tourism and traveladministration, and international relations in the 2020-2021 academic year,raising its total number to 16.

The programmes admit both international and Vietnamese students in order tofoster a multi-cultural environment at the university, Assoc Prof Dr Ho ThanhPhong, the university’s rector, said, adding that students in these programmescould easily transfer to the university’s joint training programmes withuniversities in the US, New Zealand and other places.

Many city universities also offer courses in which some of the subjects are taughtin English.

Duong Van Minh, a student of this course at the HCM City University of Sciencemsaid “I have been taught subjects such as analytical chemistry, nanochemistryand general chemistry in English. English textbooks for these subjects in thiscourse are very good and easy for me to understand because they are not tooacademic.

“Moreover, my English reading and writing skills have improved thanks to thecourse”./.