University Autonomy: Barriers need to be removed

	The register business is excited about increase of autonomy
	Financial autonomy: Empowerment along with management responsibility and accountability
	Strengthening the mechanism of assigning and ordering tasks with public non-business units

Final autonomy also poses many issues for universities, in which, the most important issue is revenue.

It was stated at the seminar on “Renovation of management of public non-business units towards the corporate governance model” held on 24th August in Thanh Hoa province.

Autonomous mechanism still has many shortcomings

According to Mr. Truong Ba Tuan, Vice President of National Institution for Vietnam Finance, the reality has shown that the autonomous mechanism for the public non-business units, especially for the under-graduate education still has many shortcomings. It is not only a slow progress, but also mechanisms and policies are not synchronous and Technical-Economic Norms have not yet been developed.

From the actual operation of the university, Dr. Nguyen Trong Nghia, Director of the University of Finance and Business Administration said that the financial autonomy of universities has put pressure on universities, and they have to improve their operation and enhance responsibility and financial administration.

However, the financial autonomy has imposed many issues for universities, in which the revenue is the most important issue. Currently, the universities’ revenue includes: State budget funds, revenues from fees and charges and services; from other revenues such as loans, joint ventures and associations. According to the roadmap, the funds for universities will decrease, but the requirements on financial autonomy increase, causing inadequacies for universities.

Mr. Nghia has shown that the policies on tuition fees and regulations on enrolment criteria are barriers for the universities in implementing financial autonomy. The tuition fees of universities are regulated by the Government, the enrollment criteria is limited by facilities and qualifications of lecturers. These two main factors have created the main revenues for universities but they are limited, which restricts the autonomy of universities.

Besides, in many universities, business revenues are mainly for salaries and wages, so the funding for facilities is insignificant. The regulations on salaries and wages paid for lecturers in accordance with their rank and position reduces the attractiveness of high-level lecturers to universities. The purpose of assigning the autonomous right for universities is to improve the efficiency of their operation, and to increase income for lecturers. However, the increase in revenue is not equivalent to the expenditure for salary and input service price, meanwhile, the State budget for recurrent expenditure reduces, so the difference between revenue and expenditure at the final settlement of universities decreases.

The issues raised by the representative of the University of Finance and Business Administration, comments that there are also general shortcomings of universities in reforming the management and finance mechanism. According to Ms. Nguyen Thi Mai Lien, Deputy Head of Training Division under the Personnel and Organization Department of the Ministry of Finance, the orientation of the reform is to promote the financial autonomy, but the State management agencies, including the Ministry of Education and the provincial People's Committees that are the governing bodies, do not want to give up their management.

“Thus, after 10 years of proposing to abolish the mechanism of governing ministry and developing the mechanism of state ownership representative for public under-graduate education institutions, but currently, there are not any undergraduate education institutions abolishing the governing body. Even, some universities still want to be governed by the State, although they meet conditions for renovation,” Ms. Lien said.

Need to have control mechanism and legal framework

Decree 16/2015/ND-CP on autonomous mechanism of public non-business units has removed shortcomings for high-income universities (for university group meeting recurrent expenditure and expenditure for development investment). They have the right to implement financial autonomy just the same as the operation model of enterprises.

However, for university group funded by State budget to ensure recurrent expenditure and investment, the financial autonomous mechanism, especially, the expenditure mechanism is not much different. Thus, Mr. Nguyen Trong Nghia proposed that it is necessary to develop the technical-economic norms, scientific and practical costs to assess the price of training services. Besides, it is necessary to unify the direction of the Government that when assigning financial autonomy to universities, it does not mean reducing the State budge,t but rather increasing capital sources, including the State budget for the under-graduate education.

It needs to specify regulations on responsibility for reporting of universities. The governing ministry and specialized ministry instead of directly intervening in the universities’ operation, it needs to issue the control mechanism and legal framework, including specifying regulations on responsibility for reporting and self-responsibility of the heads.

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Mr. Pham Xuan Thuy, Deputy Director of Personnel and Organization Department said that in the coming time, the investment structure from the State budget for the graduate education should be towards gradually reducing expenditures for the apparatus and recurrent operation, and focusing on investing in facilities. Implementing policies to support students subject to priority and students that are ordered for training in some specialized sectors for the country’s development.

At the same time, it is necessary to renovate the method of allocating budgets in line with the allocation of funds attached to tasks and final products, and to develop mechanisms to allow training institutions to independently decide on the tuition fee levels equivalent to the quality of the training service.