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INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION

A 2020 Vision for Higher Education in Vietnam

Martin Hayden and Lam Quang Thiep
Martin Hayden is professor of higher education at Southern Cross University, Australia. E-mail: mhayden@scu.edu.au. Lam Quang Thiep was, until he retired, director of the Department of Higher Education in the Ministry of Education and Training, Vietnam. E-mail: lqthiep@gmail.com. Address for both: School of Education, Southern Cross University, PO Box 157, Lismore, NSW 2477, Australia.

Vietnam has recently adopted a higher education reform agenda that, if successful, will bring about a transformation of the higher education system by 2020. The agenda reflects themes in the experience of many less-developed economies seeking to mobilize their intellectual capital through a sustained investment in higher education. What is striking about Vietnam's agenda is its ambitiousness, but herein also lies a threat to its success.

The Setting
Since the mid-1980s, Vietnam has vigorously pursued goals of industrialization and modernization. As a consequence, it is now experiencing high annual rates of economic growth, low rates of inflation, a reducing incidence of poverty, a slowing down in the rate of population growth, and, most importantly, an increase in export income. It remains, however, a poor country and one that is heavily reliant on intensive agriculture to support its population of nearly 83 million. Its per capita income level in 2004 was only US$550.

Vietnam's higher education system has undergone dramatic change during the past decade. High growth rates have seen enrollments increase from 162,000 in 1992/93 to 1,045,382 in 2002/03. At the same time, large multidisciplinary universities have become dominant in a system once characterized by small, specialized institutes and colleges. Fourteen universities, out of the more than 200 institutions in the sector, have been designated as "key universities." These universities are generally quite large, even by international standards, and there is an official expectation that they will lead the process of modernization of the higher education system, particularly by developing a strong research culture and capability. These 14 institutions enroll almost one-third of all higher education students, and they include the two national universities—one in Hanoi and the other in Ho Chi Minh City.

Problems remain, however. Only 10 percent of the relevant age group participate in higher education, mainly because of the lack of available places; young people from rural areas and poor backgrounds are less likely to be included among enrollments; management processes are severely constrained by an excess of regulatory controls; there is a lack of depth in leadership experience and skills within institutions; articulation arrangements within the system are poorly developed; legislative provisions for the rapidly expanding "nonpublic" (private) sector are weak; graduates are poorly prepared in terms of their range of skills and capacities beyond those required for narrowly academic pursuits; the staff-student ratio (about 1:30) is too high; teaching methods continue to be very traditional; the process of curriculum renewal is slow moving and bureaucratic; academic salaries are not sufficiently attractive to elicit a strong professional commitment; and most academics are not involved in research.

The Reform Agenda
In broad outline, the higher education reform agenda envisages a system that by 2020 is three to four times larger than at present, better managed and better integrated, more flexible in providing opportunities for course transfer, more equitable, more financially self-reliant, more research oriented, more focused on the commercialization of research and training opportunities, more attuned to international benchmarks of quality, and more open to international engagement. A total of 32 specific objectives are proposed, addressing nearly every aspect of the system. Of interest here are those objectives concerning the "renewal of management."

First, the reform agenda proposes to confer legal autonomy on higher education institutions, "giving them the right to decide and be responsible for training, research, human resource management and budget planning." This objective builds on repeated expressions of government policy over recent years concerning the need for decentralization of decision-making authority within the higher education system.

Second, the agenda proposes to "eliminate line-ministry control and develop a mechanism for having State ownership represented within public higher education institutions." The implications of this objective are potentially far-reaching, though many unanswered questions remain. This objective especially raises the question of what future role will be played by the 13 or so ministries that currently have quasi-proprietorial responsibilities for individual universities and colleges.

Third, the agenda calls for developing a system of "quality assurance and accreditation for higher education; improve on the legislative and regulatory environment; and accelerate the State's stewardship role in monitoring and inspecting the overall structure and scale of higher education." These objectives also represent a major commitment to reform, though much of what is implied by them must be construed contextually. Official commitment to a national quality assurance and accreditation system is especially noteworthy—this being an area that is very much in need of urgent attention.

Fourth, the agenda proposes to "develop a Higher Education Law." There is a pressing need to codify in one law the many official decrees that have impacted the sector over recent years. Laws in Vietnam are not, however, designed to be definitive and absolute. The laws jostle with other influences, including the "will of the people," as expressed by the Communist Party of Vietnam, and firm regulatory control exercised by the state.

This reform agenda contains numerous other specific objectives that are of note. It proposes, for example, that by 2020 the nonpublic (private) higher education sector should enroll 40 percent of all higher education students (currently, the proportion is about 10 percent). It proposes also that public higher education institutions should regulate their own expenditure and revenue and should diversify their income streams by engaging in the sale of contract services and the commercialization of technological developments.

Concerns
What is missing in the higher education reform agenda is a strong sense of how its objectives are going to be implemented. The decision to remove line-ministry control from public higher education institutions, for example, though an extremely bold decision in the Vietnamese context, is not backed up with any detailed explanation about how this objective will be achieved.

There are also questions related to how some of the initiatives will be funded. The proposed growth of the system will place a huge strain on Vietnam's public finances, even if, as is proposed, much of the growth takes place in the private sector and is paid for entirely by tuition fees, supplemented by land grants and taxation concessions from the state. Even this prospect raises further questions: how are so many students going to afford private higher education? what baseline standards of quality will be applied to the private sector? what is the intended balance between "for-profit" and "not-for-profit" providers?

Another notable feature of the agenda is the lack of a sense of priority regarding the objectives to be achieved by 2020. It is of concern that quality assurance and institutional accreditation, for example, are not close to the top of a priority list for the system. The experience of other countries in the region should be enough to alert Vietnam to the importance of strict institutional accreditation processes during a phase of rapid expansion, especially one that relies heavily on growth in the private sector.

Finally, it is difficult to see how Vietnam will achieve institutional autonomy in the higher education system, given the relative lack of an effective governance infrastructure across the system, and given also the precarious position of university rectors, whose authority it seems will remain forever circumscribed by Communist Party policies and processes and a state disposition to govern by means of tight regulatory control. Vietnam is not lacking in energy and commitment. Its 2020 vision for higher education may, however, be a case of trying to do too much, too quickly.

[Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number44/p11_Hayden_Thiep.htm