Hanoi, Vietnam — Vietnam has created nearly 100 universities in the past three years, yet the number of lecturers has increased only negligibly, VietNamNet Bridge, a state-controlled English-language news service, reported today.

Vietnam’s deputy minister of education and training, Banh Tien Long, said the shortage of professors means that the universities can function at only 60 percent of capacity, a situation that has affected the quality of education.

Vietnam, where two-thirds of the population is under the age of 30, is struggling to cope with a growing demand for higher education. In 2003, the last year for which official statistics were available, Vietnam had 111 universities and 119 colleges. Last year alone, according to the state-run news media, 40 universities were added.

But with faculty salaries averaging around $150 per month, there is little incentive for college graduates to go into teaching. Universities increasingly use moonlighting lecturers from other institutions to teach their classes.

This year, the Ministry of Education and Training started a program to produce 20,000 Ph.D.’s by 2020. Because Vietnam has a limited capacity to produce graduate students, the government will send half of that number abroad for training.

But Pham Phu, a professor and education activist at Ho Chi Minh City National University, said this month that such efforts would not yield a sufficient number of lecturers to staff all of the new universities. —Martha Ann Overland