Vietnam and US expand engineering education
Vietnamese agencies and US organisations signed a document on the expansion of the existing Higher Engineering Education Alliance Programme (HEEAP) in Hanoi on August 20.
The expanded HEEAP programme focuses on training leaders and lecturers, developing curricula, laboratories and facilities, a distance learning network and teaching English from 2013 to 2017. It also aims to set up data systems for universities and colleges’ engineering programmes.
The 40 million USD programme will involve the participation of the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), the Vocational Training General Department of the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs, the US International Development Agency (USAID), Intel Group, the Arizona State University (ASU), and a number of companies.
Within its framework, the MoET and ASU signed an agreement on training lecturers in English. An additional 1,000 lecturers will benefit from the programme with the participation of 12 groups and businesses.
Addressing the signing ceremony, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan, affirmed that education is always the Vietnamese Government’s top priority field.
HEEAP is a human resource training model seeing the successful combination of the State, entrepreneurs and schools, which he said, are important factors in promoting cooperation and that between schools and businesses in the private and public sectors to serve the country’s socio-economic development targets.
He affirmed the Vietnamese Government welcomes the expansion of HEEAP in scale and range of activities to accelerate Vietnam ’s tertiary education reform.
With financial assistance of USAID and Intel Group, HEEAP has trained more than 100 university and college teachers in renewing curricula and methodology for the engineering sector since its launch in 2010.-VNA
