Students Offered Free Tuition To Study Marxism

Marxism

Market forces are working against college degrees in the ideology of Marx, Lenin and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, where the Communist government has resorted to offering free tuition to attract students.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung recently signed a decree giving free tuition to students who agreed to take four-year courses on Marxism-Leninism and the works of Ho Chi Minh, the country’s revolutionary hero, at state-run universities.

Students have been shunning such degrees because potential employers are not interested in those programs, said Pham Tan Ha, director of admission and training at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities. Degrees in subjects like communications, tourism, international relations and English are more popular because students believe “they will have better chances of employment and better pay when they graduate,” he said.

Under the decree, the state will also pay tuition costs for students who study certain medical specialties, like how to treat tuberculosis and leprosy. Ordinarily, they would have to pay about $200 a year for tuition.

All Vietnamese students must take at least three classes in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh studies, but few go beyond that minimum requirement. Although Vietnam is run by Communists, the country embraced market-based policies in the 1980s. More than 60 percent of the country’s 90 million people are under 30. Competition for well-paying employment is intense among the roughly 500,000 graduates who enter the job market each year.

“Studying Marxism and Leninism is rather dry and many students don’t like it,” said Tran The Anh, 23, a fifth-year student. “The number of students studying these courses is very modest because many of them believe that it is difficult to find a job after graduation.”

Phan Thi Trang, a pharmaceutical student, conceded that the subjects might be interesting if she studied them more. But “they are just not applicable to my daily life,” she said.