The closures were based on the universities’ own self-assessment reports on human resources. They were imposed by the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET).

According to regulations introduced by the ministry last June, institutions who wish to provide doctoral training programmes, must have at least one associate professor and four lecturers who hold a doctorate degree in the field – and at least three PhDs in the speciality working on a regular basis.

To resume the programmes, the institutions have first to bridge the shortage among their staff and then notify the ministry.

Universities that fail to send an update about the situation before May, 2012, will face revocation of their licences to offer doctoral training in those specialties.

According to Deputy Minister Pham Vu Luan, institutions are now responsible for selecting PhD candidates, establishing a review board and granting degrees to qualified candidates. Unlike before, intervention from the Ministry is now minimal.

Bui The Cuong, head of the Southern Institute of Sustainable Development, which had to stop doctoral training in 10 specialities – the highest figure reported – said: "We have offered doctoral programmes since 1985 and about 140 PhD candidates have been awarded degree so far.

"However, when the new requirements about the minimum number of qualified scientific staff and professors were introduced last year, the programmes in many majors automatically became invalid because we, as a small-sized institute with a modest staff, obviously could not meet the criteria."

Cuong, whose institute comes under the Viet Nam Academy of Social Sciences, said: "Fortunately, candidates who want to pursue a degree in the 10 abandoned fields of training still have the recently opened Viet Nam Institute of Social Sciences to go to. Set up under the academy, it has a large number of staff."

The rector of the University of Mining and Geology, Nguyen Trung Kien, whose eight programmes of doctoral training were forced to a halt, said teaching programmes for the affected programmes would be strengthened in accordance with the rule. He said he hoped to resume training activities before long.

Kien said that as before, many specialties belonged to broad fields and if educational institutions stuck to wider categorisation, there would be no problems.

"However, to respond better to the reality’s demand, we divided the broad field into sub-fields. This increased the number of majors, but our staff numbers remained the same. So it’s easy to see why we failed to meet the quantitative conditions."

Kien said the university had co-operated in training with experts from large enterprises in the field, many of them with PhD or higher degrees, but they can not be counted as regular staff.

"When it comes to those majors, no institution but our university (Mining and Geology) can provide the doctoral training," he told Viet Nam News.

Ha Noi University of Technology has also been listed because its analytic chemistry field was reported to have no teaching staff who met the conditions.

Nguyen Van Xa, head of the university’s Chemistry Engineering Department said: "There must be something wrong in the statistical data, because our department has lots of lecturers who hold PhD or higher degrees."

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News