Word: vietnamize
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...methods to make the grade. Last year two dozen were caught being fed answers through Bluetooth headsets concealed under wigs. Earlier this month, police busted a ring issuing fake IDs to university students taking the test in place of high school candidates. The price? $2,500, more than twice Vietnam's average annual wage. Authorities have beefed up security: keeping test papers under lock and key; sequestering exam professors; calling in security to guard test sites...
...Cheating isn't epidemic - the Education Ministry has disqualified only 392 students so far this year - but it is an outgrowth of a bigger problem: the severe shortage of university places. Vietnam's higher-education system hasn't expanded fast enough to meet the demand from students eager to get ahead in Asia's second fastest-growing economy (after China). Nguyen Thu Phuong, 18, studied for more than a year for the exams, and was poring over a few last-minute math equations on a bench shortly before testing began. Her mother, anxiously fanning the girl as she studied, once...
...Vietnam is drawing foreign investment at a rate of nearly $1 billion per month, with investors looking to take advantage of both the country's low wages and its young and literate population. But only 13% of college-aged youths are enrolled in higher education, lagging behind China and about a quarter of the figure for Thailand. Those numbers don't bode well for Vietnam's ambitions to move into higher-end electronics and outsourcing. Tom Vallely, director of the Vietnam program of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, says the country's universities aren't churning...
...lite who make it into university find that their centrally controlled curriculum is steeped in "Ho Chi Minh Thought," with the level of courses - from law to engineering to computer science - mediocre. Professors' pay and promotion are based on seniority, not merit, and they rarely publish in international journals. "Vietnam drastically needs education reform," says Adam Sitkoff, director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi...
...Vallely, part of a delegation of U.S. educators who met with Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet during his recent visit to the U.S., says Vietnam needs a world-class flagship school - the equivalent of Tsinghua University in China or India's Institutes of Technology. Existing schools, he says, need autonomy to build their own curriculum and compete for students. "These kids who do make the cut and go to school are very smart," Vallely says. "They're just not getting much of an education when they get there." If that doesn't change, Vietnam may wind up cheating itself...