Lack of quality education hindering Vietnam's middle-income ambitions

Hanoi

NGUYEN Van Duc graduated two years ago with a bachelor's degree in economics from one of Vietnam's best universities. Today, he earns about US$250 a month as a motorbike taxi driver in Hanoi.

Mr Van Duc, whose parents took second jobs so that he could be the only one of three children to attend college, is among thousands of Vietnamese college graduates who can't land jobs in their chosen fields, even though the nation's unemployment rate is just 2.3 per cent.

"In university, we only received heavy theoretical training and a lot of Ho Chi Minh's ideology with communist party history," the 25-year-old said.

While Vietnam's schools equip students with basic skills for low-wage assembly-line work, its colleges and universities are failing to prepare youth for more complex work. As wages rise and basic manufacturing leaves for less expensive countries, that may threaten the government's ambition to attain middle-income status, defined by the World…