• Introduction
• Romania by Mihut
• Romania by Calugareanu
• Austria by Nestorowicz
• Serbia by Holubek and Milutinović
• A comparative case of Slovenia, Romania, Serbia and Macedonia in the context of EU membership status
• Vietnam by Nguyen
• China by Zheng
• New Zealand by Traveller
• Ethiopia by Woldegiyorgis

 Vietnam

 Nguyen Thanh Tung

Introduction

Vietnam's Higher Education before the economic reform in 1986 (and even before the total collapse of Soviet bloc in the early 1990s) was an extremely small and underdeveloped system in which everything was dictated by the state. Then within the last two decades, the system has undergone a radical reform with a rapid growth in size but also in the number of problems and predicaments it has been facing. At the same time new actors and forces affecting the dynamics of governance in higher education have been introduced. This complexity makes it more difficult to find out which factors are pulling the strings in the new context and to what extent and more importantly which are causing problems. However, often the  new dynamics is interpreted too simply as the shift from state control to state supervision and the rise of market force. In other words, this could be interpreted that Vietnam HE Governance is adopting New Public Management (NPM). But is it actually taking place? This question and those mentioned earlier are also the foundation of this paper. In order to answer them, the paper will analyze the governance of HE Vietnam since 1993 and predict its development in the future, using The Governance Equalizer as an analytical tool.  The content of the paper is structured as follows:

1. The analytical tool- Governance Equalizer

2. Rationale behind the choice of the periods in discussion

3. 1993-2005: Extreme State Regulation

4. 2005-2013: Competition Rising

5. 2013-2020: Towards a possible Equilibrium

6. Conclusions

 

The analytical tool - Governance Equalizer

The Governance Equalizer is an analytical instrument devised by Boer, Enders, & Schimank (2007), to compare changes in HE governance in England, the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany over the past two decades. The idea was inspired by the practice of adjusting the balance of the sound frequencies with the help of an electronic device, called equalizer, which allows users to strengthen or weaken the energy of specific frequency bands. This is a nearly perfect analogue for the authors to illustrate the weight of each mechanism that has influence on one particular sector as the authors argue that "concrete societal sub-systems or policy areas can now be understoodas configurations of various governance mechanisms." The Higher Education was chosen to make their case with five distinctively basic dimensions of governance: state regulation, stakeholder guidance, academic self-governance, managerial self-governance, and competition. In the authors' opinion, each dimension can be adjusted independently from each other. The Governance Equalizer is visualized as below:

Figure 1: The original model of the Governance Equalizer as used by Boer et al(2007)

 

The position of a black square in Figure 1 indicates the weight that each dimension should have when the system achieves NPM status. That means the combination of those illustrated black square is optimal configuration for NPM as NPM is just 'one specific configuration of governance'. According to this configuration, state regulation and academic self-governance should be low. In contrast, dimensions that should be turned up high are the other three: external guidance, managerial self-governance and competition, of which quasi-market competition should be highest because it is the best way to attain efficiency and effectiveness. Each arrow represents the trend of each force, whether it is going down or up. The end of arrow indicates the starting point in a particular period while its length embodies the degree of change.

The strengths of this tool lie in its simplicity and usefulness in analyzing and comparing the make-up of governance of different systems benchmarked against the NPM norms. It helps understand the complex dynamics, notice the main trends and the difference between dimensions as well as systems. Thus it is a powerful visual tool for both the audience and researchers to have a more systematic view on a HE system In addition, thanks to its simplicity, it is easy to grasp and command even for those who are new to NPM and the governance concepts in HE. However, its simplicity is also its weakness. It is quite difficult to illustratea trendif that trend is mixed (both up and down) in a period, which might require different arrows. And if more than one country with this special type of trend, the visual will be cluttered. Otherwise, some creativity will be needed. Another weakness of this tool is that it is rather subjective to define the positions of forces on each dimension bar. There is no instruction to measure how high is high. Similarly, it is matter of subjectivity to state that, for example, the external guidance of one country is higher than that of another. Finally, since it is a conceptual instrument modeled after a physical one, it gives a somewhat false impression that each dimension can be tuned independently, like a real equalizer. But in reality, those forces are, to some extent, interdependent. The fact that one force goes up might pull down some forces or push up others.

 

Rationale behind the choice of the periods in discussion

There are three periods discussed in this paper: 1993-2005, 2005-2013 and 2013-2020. Two basic reasons justify the choice and division of these periods. First, 1993, 2005 and 2013 are milestones that marked major changes in Vietnam's HE history, which usually are the introductions of new strategies or laws from the governance. These have triggered and propelled, or are expected to, the transform of Vietnam's HE.  2020 is the end year of a major reform plan initiated by the government in HE. The first reason also leads to the second that the characteristics of the system remain consistently throughout each period. They are constrained by the events that formed them in the beginning of one period and will be changed by the events of the next one. Having said that, the status of the beginning and of the end of each period are not identical.  In this particular case of Vietnam, they are in a continuum of the governance change. For the purpose of simplicity, the main characteristics are described for the whole period. The continuous change and its direction can be deduced from the snapshots of each period and the arrows of the equalizer.

 

1993-2005: Extreme State Regulation

Vietnam is a communist-governed country and until 1993 it still adopted the Soviet model of HE, in which the authority is mostly distributed to the Government, which in this case is controlled by a single political party- the Communist Party. This authority was channeled through multiple ministries including the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) who, based on the plans of the government, decided nearly everything from the programs to curricula, from the number of students selected to the assignment of rectors, etc. Under such regime, Vietnam HE was classified as a very under-developed system. Work was divided more by enterprises than by disciplines, which means the institution decided what an individual could do and that person barely could change the institution to keep his or her preferred discipline. In turn, the institution bureaucracy was just an extended arm of the state bureaucracy. Regarding the belief of the system[1], access to HE was highly restrictive, very few places were available but HE was free then. In the academic year of 1992-1993, there were only 162 000 HE students, representing 2% of the age group; 103 HE institutions including 9 universities (MOET, 2013), most were mono-discipline, teaching-focus ones, which means Vietnam's HE was overly specialized and its functions was to produce workforce for the government according to its planned economy. Research was by and large the function of separate institutes and not incorporated into universities(Hayden & Thiep, 2010). However there were changes under the way.

Back in 1986, before the breakdown of Soviet, the national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) announced a policy package of economic renovation, famously called DoiMoi in Vietnamese to supersede central planning in the Soviet tradition with a regulated market-oriented and open economy. This was supposed to bring about disruptive changes in the socio-political landscape of Vietnam but in fact it was just a transition in the economic terms. In spite of the limited transition, DoiMoi instilled its new thinking into HE. As a result in 1993, the Central Committee of CPV adopted a resolution on radical education reform (Resolution 04-NQ/HNTW), which was followed by an instructional decree (Decree No. 90/CP). There were three major achievements with this decree: 1/ unification and restructuring of the HE system, which were realized by merging several institutions into two national universities of Hanoi in 1993 and of Ho Chi Minh in 1995, 2/ establishment of semi-public and non-public higher education institutions with the approval of the first non-public university -Thang Long University in 1994 and  the establishment of the first foreign university- RMIT (Australia) in 2001, and 3/ introduction of Tuition Fee with public higher education institutions (HEIs) collecting tuition fees within a regulated framework. In 1998, two significant events were anticipated to improve further the state of HE in Vietnam: the Law of Education passed and WorldBank's Higher Education Project 1 started. However, the Law says little about HE; remains unclear in issues such as the role of fees, private universities and the division of responsibilityamong actors in the education sector; and above all still stresses the importance of 'a socialist curriculum' (St. George, 2010). Meanwhile, the World Bank was progressively involved in advising Vietnam's highereducation governance and fundedmore than US$80 million the project but it could not boost the emergence of more non-state institution and failed to accomplish its mission in development policy lending in HE(London, 2010).

In summary, it could be said that despite some positive changes, the Vietnam's HE Governance was characterized by extreme State Regulation, which was still heavily influenced by Soviet system model. Decisions were concentrated centrally on MOET and line ministries including Curriculum, Admission, Rector Appointment and Finance. Due to the extreme State Regulation, the other four dimensions on the equalizer remained weak. Nevertheless, thanks to some developments in the restructure of the system and the new market-oriented economy, the Managerial Self-Governance and Competition slowly gained their ground over the span of the period.

 

2005-2013: Competition Rising

Though achievements in the governance aspect were limited, by 2005 the system had expanded rapidly in terms of quantity. In 2005, there were 1.387.000 HE students, which is as nearly 10 times as in 1993, account for 13% of the relevant age group compared just 2% in 1993 (MOET, 2013). The number of universities also increased dramatically from 9 in 1993 to 104 in 2005 (MOET, 2013). The quality of HE, however, did not correspond to this rapid increase of quantity. HEIs in Vietnam had a low and diminishing ratio of staff-student (1:19 in 2002 and 1:27 in 2005); the quality of staff was also alarming with only around 47 percent of academic staff in 2005 having postgraduate qualifications-most at the master’s level[2].Furthermore, the teaching curricula and methods were outdated with most university concentrating on teaching not research and on undergraduate level rather than postgraduate. All of these resulted in the inability of Vietnam HE to provide an educated and competence workforce and irrelevance to the need of economy and society(Vallely & Wilkinson, 2008). On the other hand, the rapid expansion put a great strain on public funding when 70% budget of public institutions was funded by the State (The World Bank, 2008).

All in all, it led to the Government thinking of reforming the governance of the HE system, which was translated into the promulgation of  Resolution 14 on the “Fundamental and Comprehensive Reform of Higher Education in Vietnam 2006–2020” (known as the Higher Education Reform Agenda- HERA). Besides from ambitious targets related to massification, modernization of curriculum as well as teaching methods and better integration of research, HERA emphasizes the need of institutional autonomy and the inevitable trends of privatization, marketization and internationalization. However, it was criticized for not clearly stating how these goals could be met and in reality it achieved modest results (Nghi, 2010).

With regard to State regulation, this period witnessed the gradual shift from State Control to State Supervision but it remained high. The relationship between HEIs and State in Vietnam is both simple and complicated. It is simple because it is a politically centralized system. It is complicated because it involves many actors that have authority over HEIs and each type of HEIs has reported to different actors. National and some strategically important universities and research institutes are accountable to the prime minister office while some specialized institutions to their line-ministries (for example, The Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam is under management of Ministry of Foreign Affairs)and others to MOET. Additionally, Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) control the planning and financial aspects of all HEIs.Their control has the preference of input over output. The budget is cameralistically allocated to HEIs according to the number of students recruited, which in turn is predetermined by MOET and MPI. Whether HEIs are public or non-public, their curricula in all disciplines must conform to strict curricula frameworks provided by MOET. On the bright side, since 2006, public HEIs can have autonomous authority on borrowed fund and the faculty hiring- firing. They are also allowed to pay their staff salaries three times as high as the basic salary level according to Decree 43/2006 by the Government. More freedom has been given for private universities but only in terms of managing staff and infrastructure. They are still managed under MOET guidance and supervision with their plan submitted to MOET consent and their tuition fee and admissions constrained within fee cap and annual quota respectively.

Interestingly, although HEIs have low autonomy, the managerial self-governance scores relatively high. Today in Vietnam, most HEIs gained the status of independent legal entities, which gives more power to  Rectors. Unlike western counterparts, a Vietnamese rector has a powerful position within the institution he or she leads. All important decisions must be passed by the rector and no one can stand a chance against his or her decisions. This is due to Vietnam's specific culture that has high power distance index, which means the less powerful members of institutions accept and expect that power is distributed unequally (Hofstede & Minkov, 2010). If the rector has the vision, effective management skills and relationships with the right people in the Governance and CPV, the institution can make its way to success despite obvious constraints. Hanoi University is one of few successful examples with its Rector recognizing socio-economic trends and implementing innovative change management to modernize the university and transform it from an obsolete university of foreign languages into a multi-disciplinary player through the internationalization of its educational programs(Anh & Winter, 2010). Unfortunately, most Vietnamese rectors are appointed and upgraded from faculty who lack management and leadership skills; some are political opportunists with a penchant for power play or even corruption.

With two extremely strong top-down steering efforts from both the system level and the institutional level, the academic self-governance is stuck low. There is no such thing called academic freedom in Vietnam.National curricula frameworks dictate concretely what to teach, how to teach and even how to grade. Even in comparison to its socialist neighbor country- China, Vietnam is infamous in the degree to which its universities lack intellectual dynamism. Although they have gradually been given greater autonomy, a chaos of formal and informal controls and restrictions ensures that 'universities have remained intellectually moribund while the public discourse has grown more vibrant' (Vallely & Wilkinson, 2008, p.4). The only power that lecturers/teachers have is over their students. Again, this privilege is a result of the culture, the combination of high power distance index and the influence of Confucianism in Vietnam (Marginson, 2011).

Provided that the state is excluded, the Stakeholder Guidance or external guidance plays a unsubstantial role in Vietnam's HE stage. Traditionally, Vietnamese HEIs are not accountable to external stakeholders other than the government. The industry, employers and even students do not know about universities' plans and strategies, let alone have a say in them. Even if the government is counted in this dimension, it could not control some aspects of HE such as quality because of the input control and funding mechanism, which are not related to performance and quality in any meaningful or competitive way(Vallely & Wilkinson, 2008). Furthermore, Vietnam still has not a quality assurance framework, system or mechanism at national level for education, which could employ or create intermediate/ buffer bodies to cover the quality issues though there have been several experiments and attempts to rectify this issues (most notably, the Government made important progress in the area of quality by stating in the Education Law of 2005 that accreditation of institutions in Vietnam would be done by an independent agency). The WorldBank's Higher Education Project 2 launched in 2007 also addressed this issue but the results were delayed and expected to be delivered in the future due to the contradiction of state-centric values and  neoliberal principles(Madden, 2013). The problem can be attributed to HEIs themselves as most of them are not well prepared for accountability. Someinitial steps have been taken towards deregulation in the administration of Vietnam HE, but the process is slow because the inertia created by the long existence of centralized mechanisms in higher education management(Pham, 2004). In this period emerged some suggestions that HEIs should have a governing board (similar to board of trustees) to improve the responsiveness to social needs. However, with this political environment, it could be a formality and have no impact (London, 2010).

The most salient change in this period is the competition dimension. Money is definitely a scarce resources for most HEIs, which are under-funded especially for public HEIs. Since they could not receive more than the budget that the state has set, they have to vie for aid fund and investment from foreign actors such as Asian Development Bank or World Bank. Another resource they have to compete for now is students. In contrary with the situation 10 years ago when university slots were so coveted—only one in ten Vietnamese of college age were enrolled in post-secondary institutions, in 2013 there were 650.000 prospective students who could be recruited according to enrolment quota but there were only 450.000 eligible applicants (MOET, 2013). To make the market more competitive, in 2007, Vietnam became a member of WTO and had to signed the GATS which allows foreign institutions to easily enter the country. There are now 441 HEIs in Vietnam including 81 non-public and foreign ones (MOET, 2013). They all have to use some sort of marketing to recruit enough students particularly the non-public ones, as students generate most of their income. Besides, some of these institutions are now starting to vie for prestige to attract brightest students, talent faculty and international collaboration.

All things considered, this is the negative configuration of governance for Vietnam's HE from 2005-2013. Since education in general and higher education in particular are highly important and sensitive fields that the government is not willing to let them slip out of hand. The state still controls most aspects of HE though they have given some autonomy to HEIs. The low degree of autonomy impedes HEIs to respond quickly or appropriately to this swiftly changing world and sometimes might not act in the best interests of society and students. On the other hand, the amount of autonomy that has been given to HEIs is concentrated on the top level of institutions, which causes two severe problems. First is the absence of academic freedom, which in turn makes the academic career unattractive and aggravates the low quality of teaching and research in Vietnam. Second, the monopoly power and discretion for few individuals accompanied by the lack accountability are perfect ingredients for corruption to thrive in Vietnam (McCornac, 2012). Moreover, the privatization and marketization here apparently give nothing else than competition for students, not the quality of students but quantity of students. Instead of improving the quality of teaching, learning environment and student service, increasing number of HEIs have been lowering their bar of entrance to accept more students. Consequently, there are wide public distrust in the quality of Vietnam HE with many HEIs being just diploma mills. So what does the future hold for Vietnam's HE?

 

2013-2020: Towards a possible Equilibrium

According to the HERA objectives, in 2020, there will be 4.500.000 HE students (40% of age group) in 900 HEIs, of whom 40% going to non-public institutions. Regarding the enrolment profile, 20% of students attend selective research-oriented institutions, while the rest attend institutions providing professionally oriented training programs. 25% revenue of HE system generated from R&D activities. However with just seven years to go and the low progression experienced, it seems those targets unachievable without dramatic reform in all aspects of HE including governance. Recognizing this reality, in 2013, the government passed the Law of Higher Education with the hope that providing a legal foundation will help tackle some problems in governance and pave the way for HEIs to thrive in the global context and to respond better to the needs of the economy and society. The law dedicates some articles to stress the Institutional Autonomy, details as follows:

• removes the government cap on tuition fees (though conditions may be attached to fee levels for public institutions)

• allows HEIs to issue degrees to their graduates

• allows HEIs to manage their academic affairs within the curriculum set by MOET

• allows HEIs to choose the education quality accreditation agency from a list of accreditation agencies approved by MOET

The accountability also is mentioned with the responsibility for each HEI to form its own University Council (for public HEIs) or Board of Directors (for private HEIs) comprised of various stakeholders (including a Communist Party member) to set and supervise the vision, mission and strategy of HEIs. The Law also requires internal and external accreditation of HEIs. The results of quality accreditation must be publicly announced.

Meanwhile, looking at the big picture of a foreseeable future, the recession will be likely to continue and start to affect HE (right now, it barely makes any impact on Vietnam HE) (Postiglione, 2011). The state budget will not be able to cover the cost the massification requires, which means public will have to manage to find alternative sources of funding. The cost of traditional HE will increase if the quality is to improve or at least remain, which leads the learners to find alternative types of HE such as MOOCs (Massive online open courses). A growing number of international HEIs will come to share the pie as the pie of their existing or home markets is shrinking. However the most underrated trend but often ignored in Vietnam is the stagnation of the relevant age group to HE thanks to the phenomenon of aging population starting to take place in Vietnam (UNFPA, 2011). A ranking system is expected to be introduced in the near future by MOET and the ranking of universities will inform the allocation of state budget.  All point to the fierce competition facing HEIs in the future.

Taking all these developments into account, it is expected that the State Regulation will be moderate, leaving the space for higher autonomy of HEIs but not too high. The introduction of governing council and quality assurance/ accreditation agencies will be predicted to improve the status of External Guidance but not much as this type of organization is still, to some extent, politically oriented. Academic self governance will slightly go up as MOET is gradually loose the control on academic affairs but it is the least changing dimensions unless it adopts the collegial mechanism of American HE system (Boer, Enders, & Schimank, 2007). In contrast, the most changing one is the Competition which will be very high by 2020.

 

Conclusions

Putting all three periods in the equalizer graphics, a cohesive picture of  Governance in Vietnam's HE from 1993 to 2020 will be formed. Before any conclusion drawn, it should be noted that in this paper the tool is adapted differently from the original to accommodate the function of this paper, which is to describe the governance of only one country but in three different periods. The black squares denote the current situation, in this case, the configuration of governance of Vietnam's HE in 2013. The pointed end of arrows indicates the status of each dimension in 2020 while the other end in 1993. (Figure 2)

Figure 2: The Governance Equalizer of Vietnam's HE from 1993 to 2020

 

Two most striking trends in the change of governance of Vietnam's HE from 1993 to 2020 are the decrease of the State Regulation and the increase of Competition. Between the two Competition has the biggest change. In 1993, with the introduction of tuition fee and the establishment of non-public HEIs, Vietnam's HE started to possess some market elements. Since then, the number of HEIs, whether public or private or foreign, has proliferated while the state budget is always modest and qualified academics are definitely rare commodities in this developing country. Consequently, the competition has been going up at a quite fast pace. The globalization, the e-learning and the aging population are predicted to accelerate this trend in the future. Inversely, the State Regulation has been going into the opposite direction. In a communist nation, the extreme state control is typical. However with the pressure of the need of the economy reform to gain competitive advantage in the globalized and knowledgeworld and the limit of the State's capacity, the government has to deregulate HE, to some degree.

To this point, one could say that Vietnam' HE is "on the way towards New Public Management" because of the obvious "less state and more market" trend. But in practice, it is not. Just looking at the new Law of Higher Education, it is easily seen that the State does not give much autonomy for HEIs when stating that HEIs can manage their academic affairs within the curriculum set by MOET. How could HEIs be free to choose what to teach and how to teach when a strict and detailed curriculum is imposed on them? Since higher education isa highly important and sensitive field the government is not willing to let it slip out of hand, let alone the fact that Vietnam will remain a socialist country for a long time ahead. On the other hand although the competition in Vietnam's HE t is rapidly increasing, it is mostly just for students.Only few HEIs go for prestige, for research fund or for the talents. If this pattern continues, the competition will stand still, not moving up to another level. So Vietnam's HE will probably not achieve New Public Management. It is even not going for New Public Management. Apparently, the governance in Vietnam's HE is just balancing itself, moving away from the extreme.

Another interesting trend is the Academic Self-Governancegoing up. It is the opposite direction of most systems in Western countries whose Academic Self-Governance is losing ground to other forces except the state regulation. A possible explanation for this is that it comes from a very low starting point with little freedom. Nearly it has hit the bottom so the only way is to go up. Therefore, when the State Regulation dispersed even to a limited degree, it tookthe opportunity to move up. A case in point is that reduced of the time of teaching  the compulsory Marxism-Leninist subjects was reduced partly due to academic community's pressure (St.George, 2010). However it will not be long when the managerial self governance and external guidance take the lead in institutions especially considering the academic community in Vietnamese HEIs is quite passive and indifferent. Vietnamese lecturers mostly focus on teaching whatever the higher authority orders them to teach and then moonlight to gain more money to compensate their low salary. There is no research culture  orno such thing called peer review, and the professional communities either do not exist or are inanimate. Consequently on the equalizer, Academic Self-Governance is the dimension with the least change.

Finally,Managerial Self-Governance is one of the winners on the governance configuration thanks partly to the modest State deregulation and mostly to the distinct culture of Vietnam's HE. It will climb up higher in the future but not much for three reasons. First, the State Regulation will not loose its grip further on HE.  Second, there is growing public distrust and discontent about the malpractice, corruption and poor quality in HE because of the new found autonomy, even in small dose, but without competent management and accountability. Third, with the new law, universities must establish their university councils or boards of directors consisting of various stakeholders, which could take some power from the university leaders. It also means that the External Guidance will gain groundas it should have done in the past. However it is estimated that there is not much room for it to go higher because of the compulsory presence of Party representatives in such boards and councils, which is another kind of state arms in institutions, the political insignificance of Vietnamese students who rarely voice their opinion and when they speak no one listen to, the indifference of other stakeholders such as employers, industries, etc. when they do not see any benefit in short term (another trait of Vietnam's culture) and the ineffectiveness of buffer agencies. In addition, there will be tensions at play between the Managerial Self-Governance and External Guidance so that one will hold back the other.

To sum up, although there are some shortcomings, the Governance Equalizer is useful to analyze the governance make-up of a HE system and spot its trends. Using this tool, the paper is able to break down the governance of Vietnam's HE in order to answer the questions raised in the beginning. Although the state is giving some autonomy to institutions, it is still the one in control. The competition is a growing force that will make Vietnam's HE a very competitive market but hardly a competitive system. On the darker side, the new found autonomy and the marketization without accountability from HEIs and strong external guidance formulate opportunities for corruption and diploma mills. That combination will also equate rapid expansion with diminishing quality of Vietnam's HE. And being a communist country and a short term orientation culture[3], Vietnam is not going for New Public Management in any public service. Its HE's governance components are not approaching NPM configuration but balancing themselves, moving from extremes.

 

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