Vietnam is a booming country that has seen sweeping market reforms since the 1980s, as the Communist government has moved from a command-style economic system to a more open capitalist system without relinquishing political control.
As in China, the success of this strategy has been remarkable: Over the past 30 years, Vietnam, a country of 92.7 million people (2016, World Bank), has transformed from an impoverished, war-ravaged country to a newly industrialized “tiger cub” with one of the most dynamic economies in the world. Between 1990 and 2016, Vietnam’s GDP grew by a whopping 3,303 percent, the second-fastest growth rate worldwide, only surpassed by China.
The country’s continued economic rise is not guaranteed and remains dependent on a variety of factors, including sustained levels of foreign direct investments, political stability, infrastructure development, and the modernization of a stifling regulatory system plagued by corruption.
Crucially, Vietnam needs to upskill its labor force, which is rapidly shifting with approximately 1 million agricultural workers transitioning into industry and services each year. Expanding access to education and vocational training are paramount objectives of the government. The number of students in higher education grew from around 133,000 students in 1987 to 2.12 million students by 2015. Despite its meteoric economic growth, Vietnam remains a relatively poor country with a per capita GDP of USD $2,186 – less than half of that of Thailand’s GDP, for example (2016, World Bank).
However, the economic outlook for Vietnam looks bright. The professional services firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers, for instance, recently forecast that Vietnam to continue to grow at a rapid pace over the coming decades, and become the world’s 20th largest economy by 2050.
Nominally still a Socialist Republic under Communist one-party rule, Vietnam is expected by many to eventually follow the development trajectory of Asia’s “tiger economies” (South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong).
Education Reforms
One of Vietnam’s strategies to achieve further economic growth is the modernization of its education system, which is considered to be lagging behind other Southeast Asian countries by outside observers. Education features prominently in Vietnam’s current “socio-economic development strategy for 2011-2020”, which seeks to advance human capital development, boost enrollments in higher education, and modernize education to meet the needs of the country’s industrialization in a global environment. The goals of several of the current education reforms were already laid down in a government directive from 2005 on the “Comprehensive Reform of Higher Education in Vietnam, 2006–2020”.
Among the bold reforms currently enacted are the establishment of new accreditation and quality assurance mechanisms, the creation of a national qualifications framework, and a drastic increase in higher education enrollments by 125 percent, from 200 students per 10,000 people in 2010 to 450 students per 10,000 people by 2020.
- Teaching quality will be improved by requiring almost all higher education instructors to hold masters or doctoral degrees by 2020.
- Labor force development is being prioritized with large-scale investments in applied, employment-geared training.
- 70 to 80 percent of the student population should be enrolled in applied programs by 2020.
- The secondary education system is also undergoing major reforms, most notably with regards to high school graduation examinations and university admissions.
Another goal of the current reforms is the internationalization of Vietnam’s still somewhat insular higher education system. The government is trying to expand English-language education in Vietnam, and promote transnational cooperation and exchange with countries like Australia, France, the U.S., Japan, and Germany. Vietnam has also acceded to international education agreements, such as the Asia-Pacific Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications in Higher Education. Study abroad of Vietnamese students and scholars is explicitly promoted, while the government simultaneously seeks to increase the number of foreign students and researchers in Vietnam.
These fast-evolving developments have implications for international credential evaluation and student recruitment in Vietnam. To better understand these changes, this article describes current trends and developments in Vietnamese education and student mobility and provides an overview of the Vietnamese education system.
Vietnam is currently one of the most dynamic outbound student markets worldwide, trailing mega sending countries like China and India only in sheer size. Between 1999 and 2016, the number of outbound Vietnamese degree students exploded by fully 680 percent, from 8,169 to 63,703 students (UNESCO Institute of Statistics). Outbound degree mobility in China, by comparison, grew by 549 percent during the same period, while the number of outbound Indian degree students increased by only 360 percent.
This drastic increase in Vietnamese mobility reflects the country’s swift economic growth, as well as of the shortcomings of its education system. Common outbound mobility drivers, such as an emerging middle class able to afford study abroad and rapid massification of education coupled with limited access to high-quality education, are prominent in the country. Vietnam has the fastest growing middle class in Southeast Asia, projected to grow to anywhere between 33 and 44 million people by 2020, depending on the estimate. Tertiary enrollments, meanwhile, tripled between 1999 and 2015. The number of youths seeking higher education in Vietnam has increased significantly, swelling the ranks of potential mobile students. Given Vietnam’s economic growth projections, student mobility is bound to increase in the years ahead, especially as the country seeks to internationalize its economy and education system.
