The first time I went back to Vietnam after 18 years with a group of Australian professionals, we were amazed to see so many academic titles from the Vietnamese officers we met. Although I am not directly involved in the field of teaching or academic research, either here in Australia or in Vietnam, I would like to share with you some of the limited information I received, mostly from talking to the people in Vietnam, and from anecdotal evidence.
Vietnamese youths make a living by the gabage dump.
Everywhere we went, the people I met addressed themselves as Engineers. We met the so-called Mathematical Engineers, Economic Engineers, Foreign Language Engineers, Land Management Engineers, etc. An Australian accreditation committee has recently ascertained that the Vietnamese PTS could be generally regarded as equivalent only to the Australian Masters degree. The granting of a degree was nearly automatic, after staying over a certain period of time. This in principle is similar to part-time education in the West, where an employee can apply for time off from work in order to pursue further study at a university.