At the 2024 university education conference, held on August 9 in Hanoi, Associate Professor Dr. Tran Thien Phuc, Vice President of Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT) proposed to eliminate the early admission method when students have not completed the high school education program.

According to Mr. Phuc, in some recent admissions consulting programs, some consultants suggested that candidates put their early admission wishes first, which is incorrect but they still advised, leading to unfairness and losing the students' admission opportunities.

Mr. Phuc said that from 2022, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology will set general criteria for admission using only one method, which is to combine all factors: Academic transcript scores, competency assessment test scores, certificates..., thus ensuring fairness for students.

"In 2022, when we started recruiting in this way, we were worried that it would be difficult to recruit students, but that year, the total enrollment target reached 8,500 students and this year, there are 17,200 candidates registered for Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology.

Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology supports the one-time admission for one wish online, this helps candidates have complete fairness," said Mr. Phuc.

Regarding early enrollment, at the previous conference, there was no consensus when some schools agreed, while others suggested it should be "eliminated".

According to Associate Professor Dr. Le Thanh Bac, Vice President of Danang University, the reality is that most students who are admitted early do not concentrate their full potential on the high school graduation exam. Most of them only need to pass the graduation exam.

The Vice President of Danang University also revealed that in recent years, the virtual rate of early admission is still at 200-300%. When applying early, data on priority areas and priority subjects is not available, so when post-auditing, many errors are discovered.

From there, Mr. Bac proposed that from 2025, the Ministry should have a regulation that admissions can only be announced after students complete the high school graduation exam.

Sharing the same concern, Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Huu Cong, Vice Director of Thai Nguyen University, said that at this unit, only about 20% of early admitted candidates register their first choice. The advantage of early admission is to help students feel secure, but "sometimes it leads to being too secure".

On the other hand, universities also have difficulty predicting the virtual rate. The vice director proposed that from 2025, the early admission method should be reconsidered. He recommended that this option should be limited and reserved for specific, important majors.

Responding to this issue, Deputy Minister of Education and Training Hoang Minh Son said that early admission has positive aspects but also causes students to be distracted. Recently, many Departments of Education and Training and high schools have reported and worried about this, because many students neglect their studies when they know they have been admitted early.

Early admission is good if it is for direct admission, very talented and gifted candidates or if the school can accept them freely without worrying about quotas. But if quotas are not controlled, it will lead to unfairness.

Regarding the advantages of early admission, the Deputy Minister of Education and Training previously stated that schools are more proactive, reducing pressure on candidates and schools. However, the downside also creates anxiety for candidates who see their friends applying early, so they also have to worry about applying early. Other limitations include errors and difficulty in predicting admission rates.

In particular, Deputy Minister Son emphasized the issue of unfairness when schools set early admission quotas, which will have a certain degree of illusion, making it difficult to have a basis for verification. He cited an example: a school has 100 quotas for major A, but the school sets 60 quotas for early admission. "What is the basis for this number of 60?" the Deputy Minister asked.

Another situation is that the school has not predicted the virtual rate, so with 100 quotas but increased to 200 quotas for early admission, in the end, there are enough 100 candidates registering for early admission. Thus, when the early admission quota is full, there will be no quotas for other cases.

"This is unfair and has been a very painful phenomenon in recent years. It has not only appeared in one school but many schools, leading to some schools having actual enrollment numbers that far exceed the target," Deputy Minister Hoang Minh Son shared.