On the morning of December 20, the scientific workshop "Promoting innovation and entrepreneurship among students: Current situation and solutions" organized by the National Council for Education and Human Resources Development attracted nearly 100 experts and scientists.

Entrepreneurship and innovation among students are still being underestimated.

Speaking at the workshop, Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Chi - Deputy Minister of Education and Training - said that innovation and entrepreneurship among students is an important task, which is the task of students and universities. However, at this time, schools are facing many problems, opportunities and challenges from these tasks.

Since 2017, the Prime Minister has approved a project to support students in starting businesses until 2025. This year, the Ministry will summarize and evaluate the 5-year implementation of the project to enter a new development stage.

The most important thing is the change in awareness and thinking of the teaching and learning practices of universities and students.

"When it comes to student entrepreneurship and innovation motivation, we often take it lightly, ignore it, do not put it in the right place, and only consider this as elementary knowledge.

Without a solid foundation, startups and innovative products cannot develop.

"If they do not originate from knowledge and the foundation of science, our products will only be temporary and certainly will not reach the level of modern products," Ms. Chi emphasized.

58% of universities include entrepreneurship as a subject

According to Mr. Nguyen Xuan An Viet - Deputy Director of the Department of Political Education and Student Affairs (Ministry of Education and Training), the ministry has assigned the task of piloting the construction of an innovation and startup ecosystem to 3 universities.

There are 212 universities and 6 colleges that have students participating in startup projects. The number of universities that make startup content a compulsory or elective subject, with a minimum of 2 credits/subject, is 58%.

From 2020 to 2023, there will be approximately 33,808 student startup projects, an average of 5,635 projects/year. From 2020 to present, there have been approximately 300 startups incubated by universities.

The number of startups that raised capital from investors was 12, the largest capital was 1 billion VND/project.

From 2022 to 2023, the Ministry of Education and Training has supported 7 higher education institutions and transferred 10 business projects to create social impacts to localities with a total budget of 6.13 billion VND from the Ministry's National Target Program on Poverty Reduction for the period 2021 - 2025.

Currently, the Ministry of Education and Training has a project to support student startup projects after the National Startup Festival with a total capital of 5.9 billion VND for three years (2023 - 2025), incubating 10 projects each year to support them to become social impact startups. Each project is supported with seed capital of about 80 million VND to complete sample products before launching them to the market.

There are 15 higher education institutions that have established Startup Support Funds, typically the BK - Funds of Hanoi University of Science and Technology with a capital scale of approximately 30 billion VND.

Training content on startups is not yet linked to practice.

The Ministry of Education and Training assessed that the work of supporting innovative startups in universities has achieved certain results but still has many limitations.

"In particular, startup support centers in universities are still weak, lacking direction, mechanisms, and resources. Investment funds for startup activities in schools are not regularly allocated, making it very difficult to build and plan.

Many student start-up products have difficulty reaching the real market due to a lack of skills in market research, demand analysis and product marketing," said Mr. Viet.

Current startup ideas are mostly repetitive, not highly creative, and not linked to the needs of people and the community, leading to ideas and projects not attracting investment resources from funds.

Regarding the cause, Mr. Viet said that the training content on startups provided to students is still very limited, not deep enough, not linked to reality, and does not have practice conditions, leading to low science and technology content.

Current schools have not yet oriented and specified startup activities, linked to the mission and vision of the university.

Associate Professor Dr. Huynh Quyet Thang - Director of Hanoi University of Science and Technology, said: "Universities cannot train startups. If you think that startups are easy, the movement will fail immediately. Universities and startup support centers need to work closely together. Technical schools must coordinate with schools of economics and social sciences to successfully start a business."