HANOI, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam is suffering from a shortage of qualified lecturers in universities and colleges, with the ratio of students to professors 743 to one, the Vietnam News Agency reported on Monday, citing statistics from the National Title Council (NTC) of Vietnam.

    The number of professors in Vietnam is smaller than that of universities. Of 369 universities and colleges with more than 1.6 million students, there are more than 56,000 lecturers; of which only 314 are professors and 1.845 are associate professors, according to NTC.

    As the country lacks of qualified lecturers, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) under Vietnam's Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) has recently brought up the proposal of allowing only associate professors and professors as guest lecturers in universities.

    The proposal is to improve the quality of teaching in Vietnam's universities and colleges, said Ta Duc Thinh, head of MoET's DST.

    The recent proposal sparked concerns among Vietnamese university leaders, saying that if the proposal was approved, many universities and colleges in Vietnam would face great difficulties as the number of professors and associate professors who can give lectures is very small.

    Currently, the rate of doctors teaching in Vietnam's universities is 14.7 percent, while in colleges, the figure is 1.4percent, said NTC.

    The MoET targets by 2020 to raise those figures to 20 percent in universities and five percent in colleges, said Tran Thi Ha, head of the Department of Undergraduate and Post-Graduate Training.