In the last few years, Vietnam has invested millions of dollars to build and stock provincial-level vocational schools to provide the skilled labour the country needs to man its rapidly expanding economy.
But an extraordinary number of these new facilities remain underused or even empty. The reason is that more than 80% of the one million high school graduates the country produces every year opt to apply for university, and 60% of those get places.
So while Vietnam is churning out far more university graduates than it can employ, only 10% of high school graduates elect to go to vocational training schools.
