Continuing Education - A New Tendency

Continuing education has become popular in today’s world of education, because it can meet requirements for quality, diplomas and budget.

Statistic figures show that Vietnamese students have joined the education model. Bui Thi Thanh Nga, director of the Thames Business School Centre, explained that more and more students had chosen continuing education as the model could help them save significantly on tuitions. In comparison with complete education, the model can save students a third of tuition fees.

According to one survey, an 18-month complete education course costs between US$25,000 and $30,000, including tuition and accommodation costs, while a continuing education course costs only between US$10,000 and $13,000.

Apart from money saving, continuing education has attracted many students thanks to its internationally recognised diplomas, which will ensure graduates good jobs. According to Nga, students can choose suitable subjects themselves, such as information technology, communication or others at famous universities, including the University of Southern New Hampshire (the US), the Informatics Academy (Singapore). At first, these students will study in Vietnam then they move to alliance universities abroad.

Phan Thi Quynh Lam from Tay Ho district, Hanoi, said that her child studied at the Informatics Academy as it was a leading organisation in Singapore to provide business administration and information technology training. After studying at the Thames’ affiliate in Vietnam, and one year in Singapore, Quynh’s child will have a diploma of the Informatics Academy. This is an example for a continuing education (2+1) model, which is applied in accordance with international standards.   The quality of lecturers and training programmes is tightly controlled by allied universities. The access to international universities is another advantage of the model.

Furthermore, the continuing education model helps build up confidence of students’ parents. Lam said that parents could not set their mind at rest when their children go abroad for study at the age of less than 20 years. She said that with her child joining the continuing education course, she could save money and did not worry about him.

However, like many other education models, continuing education has high requirements for foreign language skills. Nga said that the biggest obstacle for Vietnamese students was their poor foreign language credit. Students of continuing education courses must have good English with minimum IELTS of 5.0. Therefore, those who want to join the programmes should have good skills in English.