Countries and Regions

NUMBER 56, SUMMER 2009

Vietnam’s Strategy on Higher Education: The Hardware Needs Software

Dennis C. McCornac
Dennis C. McCornac is associate professor of economics at Anne Arundel Community College, 101 College Parkway, Arnold, MD. E-mail: dmccornac@aacc.edu..

Virtuous and talented men are state sustaining elements: The strength and the prosperity of a state depend on its vitality, and a state becomes weaker as such vitality fails. That is why all the Saint Emperors and clear-sighted Kings did not fail in seeing to the formation of men of talent and the employment of literati to develop this vitality.          —Nien Hieu Dai Bao, 1442

If Vietnam is to achieve the lofty goals of the prophetic words quoted above and inscribed on a plaque hanging inside Hanoi’s Temple of Literature, the first university in Vietnam and for centuries the principal center of learning, it is imperative that Vietnam establish a high-quality, sustainable system of higher education if it desires to continue on its development path.

The New Strategy
The recently released Draft Strategy for Education Development for 2009–2020 has set a number of goals for the Vietnamese education system. One of the main targets calls for the construction of four international standard universities, over the next decade, and to ensure that by 2020 at least two of these universities become among the 200 top universities in the world. These universities, estimated to cost US$400 million to build and staff, will be interdisciplinary, providing high-quality education in both Vietnamese and English.

Another goal outlined in the draft is to have 450 university students per 10,000 people by 2020. This would be a dramatic increase from the current ratio of 180 per 10,000 persons and would require not only a tripling of the number of colleges and universities but a fourfold increase in the number of students.

Vast improvements must occur in the primary and secondary educational sectors to create a pipeline of students into higher education. The quality of higher education must be addressed and significantly improved to meet the objective of having 5 percent of undergraduates obtain the knowledge equal to that of students graduating with honors from the leading universities in countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The Need for Change
The poor quality of Vietnam’s educational sector is well known. The Ministry of Education and Training, while denying the opinion that Vietnam educational reform is at a standstill, readily acknowledges the need for major change. Thus, devoting significant resources to building international standard universities can be perceived as a radical move designed to shake up the system.

The Top-Down Approach
The policy of building one or more international standard universities to reform the educational system depicts a trickle-down theory. This approach involves providing tax cuts or other benefits to the higher-income groups and business with the expectation that the benefits will eventually flow to the broader population.

It could be interpreted that building an international standard university with high-quality faculty, facilities, and students would serve as a testing ground for higher education reform throughout Vietnam. The successful lessons learned from this model will provide the impetus for other universities to emulate and the benefits will trickle down to all levels of the educational system.

One of the keystones of the international standard university model is the ability of these institutions to act on an autonomous basis free from the constraints of Ministry of Education and Training. As Vladmir Briller recently noted, “Vietnam is under a curriculum based on teaching, not on learning. That means the Ministry of Education and Training prescribes what you teach and not what students learn and will be able to do. This is a major crisis.” Thus, autonomy would include freedom from regulations that govern curriculum, faculty hiring and advancement, and student enrollment.

The Bottom-Up Approach
The bottom-up or grassroots approach to economic development includes consolidating the higher education system through mergers of smaller and mid-sized colleges, reforming university governance and finances, and promoting quality through an innovations program which give the incentive to universities themselves to promote internal reform. To date, however, such an approach has not yet proved successful, primarily attributable to inadequacies in educational management and a system of entrenched bureaucracy.

The Real Problem May be the Software
Vietnam has already created nearly 100 universities in the past three years. While the building of more universities tackles the problem of expanding the “hardware,” the real debate on the future of Vietnam’s education system should focus on the severe shortage of “software” or qualified human resources.

In Vietnam, where two-thirds of the population is under the age of 30, universities are struggling to cope with a growing demand. Despite the fact that education has expanded, the number of lecturers has not seen any considerable change. Given the low salaries of instructors, averaging only US$150 per month, many people have moved to more lucrative careers—putting severe strains on universities and impeding the enticement of new entrants into the field.

The Vietnamese government reports approximately 1.6 million students and over 53,000 lecturers, or one lecturer for every 28 students. However, to enroll close to 4.5 million students by 2020 and keep the student to lecturer ratio constant, 220,000 more lecturers—an average of 12,000 more lecturers every year—must be employed.

The current shortage requires faculty to teach more hours. At one of the major universities in Hanoi, for example, the average teaching hours of lecturers is reported to be 162 percent higher than the required hours under the current regulations. Some institutions have resorted to staffing a majority of their courses with full-time lecturers from other schools, hired on a part-time basis or employing faculty with only a bachelor’s degree.

The shortage of faculty is especially severe at the advanced level. Data indicate slightly over 10 percent of faculty hold a doctorate degree, although the term doctorate may be misleading. Many Vietnamese doctorate holders, particularly if educated domestically, are actually educated only to the bachelor’s level on the international scale.

Hope for the Future
The Vietnamese government has embarked on an ambitious plan to enable individuals to pursue advanced degree programs both in Vietnam and abroad, although the target to train 20,000 PhDs over the next decade may not be realistic. The educational authorities appear to be counting on outside aid and educational partnerships to assist in this undertaking. A number of countries, including the United States, Switzerland, Finland, Belgium, France, and Japan are currently providing support for such endeavors. Yet since funding is a scarce resource for all parties, cost-effective programs are advisable, and only time will tell if the current methods of training are economically beneficial.

There is no doubt that “virtuous and talented men” are state sustaining elements. However, if Vietnam is to take a great leap forward in developing its educational system it must choose the proper strategy of hardware and software development to produce graduates with the skills and qualifications needed to survive in the new market-oriented environment.

[Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number56/p20_McCornac.htm