The Ministry of Education and Training has just submitted a draft decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree No. 84/2020/ND-CP of the Government detailing a number of articles of the Law on Education.

Accordingly, the Ministry of Education and Training will develop regulations on student work, in which the group considered and granted scholarships to encourage learning includes: students in other forms of training such as work-study, distance learning, not just full-time students.

According to the submission, previously at point b, clause 4, article 8, Decree 84 of the Government in 2020 stipulated: "For vocational education institutions and universities, scholarships to encourage learning are arranged at least equal to 8% of tuition revenue for public schools".

However, the subjects considered and granted scholarships to encourage learning are only full-time students according to the provisions of Point c, Clause 1, Article 8 of Circular 10/2016/TT-BGDDT promulgating regulations on student work for full-time university training programs.

Therefore, it is not appropriate to allocate scholarships to all tuition fees, including non-regular students, but only to consider and grant scholarships to regular students.

For vocational training institutions and universities, the ministry plans to amend the study incentive scholarship to be arranged at a minimum of 5% of tuition revenue for public schools and at a minimum of 2% of tuition revenue for private schools.

Explaining this amendment, the ministry said that through the preliminary report on the implementation of Decree 84 and the survey results, the majority of opinions from public higher education institutions said that the deduction of 8% of tuition revenue is high, making it difficult for public higher education institutions, especially autonomous schools at level 1.

Currently, according to the provisions of Decree 109/2022/ND-CP on scientific and technological activities in higher education institutions, every year higher education institutions allocate at least 5% of tuition revenue, and research-oriented higher education institutions allocate at least 8% of tuition revenue for scientific, technological and innovation activities.

Thus, the total 13-16% of tuition revenue spent on scholarships to encourage learning and scientific and technological activities of the school is a large proportion, while universities mainly have revenue from tuition fees.

Currently, many universities are offering scholarships to about 10% of full-time students with the best academic results by class and major, with three levels of academic performance: good, excellent and excellent.