Financial autonomy at public universities: financial challenges for learners

Financial autonomy is considered an inevitable trend in the development of higher education sector as it can help public universities increase their revenue in order to not only improve their facilities, training quality, and income of employees and faculties, but also reduce the pressure on the state budget. However, it will cause many difficulties for learners due to the higher tuition fees. As a result, it requires the government and relevant state management agencies to support learners when many public universities have adopted the financial autonomy mechanism. This paper analyzes the financial autonomy mechanism for public universities in Vietnam, and proposes some solutions to better support learners overcome challenges related education costs.