Issues of teaching business statistics in VN

Abstract

In Vietnam, during the period of planned economy, statistical analysis methods were mainly based on descriptive statistics. At the company-level, statistics are used to reflect the results of the production process such as the production output, sales and profits. Following Vietnam’s implementation of innovation policy, market economy is gradually being built. Enterprises are becoming more active participants in the process of strategic planning, business policy changing, surveying market demand, grasping customer tastes, discovering customer behavior and psychology, evaluating marketing activities and branding. In the context of market economy more domestic and foreign competition increases the need for companies to identify, understand and quantify the uncertainties and factors which influence business operations. The tools for research of causal relationships become necessary in many businesses. However, Vietnamese economy is the corporate governance and business operations mostly based on accumulated experience, intuition of managers and companies’ convenient practice. A lot of Vietnamese enterprises have grown up from family businesess, and now most of them still be in a small scale. Statistical application needs of people who is responsible for social, economic and business management still simple. The needs of statistics application do not put strong pressure on the change of teaching business statistics in Vietnamese universities of economics. Issues of teaching business statistics at universities of economics: (1) Syllabi of courses related to statistics are scattered, and suffer from overlap and omission. These courses include Statistical probability theory and mathematical statistics, Principles of economic statistics (Business statistics), Business and economic forecasting, Econometrics, Data analysis…; (2) Lack of intensive courses for students to choose as major or elective courses designed for different fields of study. (3) The teaching of statistics lacks practice because of big class size. Instructors cannot apply advanced teaching methods which make use of mini projects, group work or practice on personal computers. (4) - Teaching materials lack practical examples especially is the absence of real situations (cases). (5) Assessment of learning outcomes still focuses heavily on students’ skills of using calculating formulas. Recent movements: Some programs have started to focus on training quality. Small class size design, use of statistical packages and teaching assistant system are now utilized to facilitate teaching business statistics in Vietnam. “Special training program” of Ho Chi Minh Open University, Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics & Finance, and “high quality training program” of Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics are some typical examples in the Ho Chi Minh region.