For decades, Vietnam has been among Asia’s most vibrant outgoing student markets, with households investing greatly in overseas education opportunities in locations such as Australia, the UK, France and the United States.
However as the country’s economy accelerates and policymakers pursue ambitious reforms, Vietnam is progressively placing itself as a location for global students, a host for global education (TNE), and a partner in global higher education.
Speaking with The PIE News, leaders from 2 organizations at the leading edge of Vietnam’s internationalisation efforts said the nation is entering a new stage of advancement, sustained by federal government support, growing need for global programs and a desire to develop an internationally competitive workforce.
Vietnam hosts around 20,000 global trainees and is intending to increase that figure to around 35,000 in the next five years, according to Scott Thompson-Whiteside, professional vice-chancellor and general director of RMIT University Vietnam.
The Australian university has actually run in Vietnam for 26 years and remains the country’s only totally foreign-owned branch campus.
Thompson-Whiteside stated recent government reforms have indicated a clear objective to draw in more worldwide providers and deepen global engagement, with around 200 TNE programs currently running in partnership with overseas institutions, particularly from Australia, the UK and Germany.
For Thompson-Whiteside, the trajectory echoes an earlier regional success story.
“I invested eight years in Malaysia when Malaysia was just starting to take off with TNE in the late 90s. I seem like Vietnam is now at a comparable moment in time with ambition to grow worldwide collaborations,” he stated.
“They are taking on all these other nations, competing with Malaysia and India to attract the best universities to establish foreign branch schools.”
RMIT Vietnam registers around 12,000 trainees, around 95% of whom are Vietnamese, and provides programs completely in English, aligned with its Melbourne campus.
For Thompson-Whiteside, the design is significantly defined by employability and tight alignment with market needs in a rapidly broadening economy.
“We work very carefully with regional market on internships, placements, industry-embedded learning. To be truthful, we have actually got more placements than we have trainees to fill them, due to the fact that we have numerous business knocking on our door.”
“Our students are English speaking, they can easily fit into international companies, but we likewise teach them with a critical mindset, with a creative mindset,” he added.
Vietnam’s rapid financial growth is also reshaping higher education concerns, with increasing focus on science, innovation and development.
“Vietnam is changing quickly. GDP was 8% last year. The goal is to have GDP of a minimum of 10% for the next five years. I indicate, that’s an amazing growth mark,” he said. “The ambition around science, technology, and development is substantial.”
Vietnam is changing rapidly. GDP was 8% last year. The objective is to have GDP of at least 10% for the next 5 years … that’s an unbelievable growth mark
Scott Thompson-Whiteside, RMIT University Vietnam
That shift is already feeding into institutional planning, discussed Thompson-Whiteside: “50% of RMIT Vietnam’s population are business students. What the Vietnam government need and want is for universities to invest more into STEM. We do have STEM courses, however most likely over the next 5 years that’s going to be a location for us to expand.”
The university is likewise expanding its research study and postgraduate provision.
“We intend to grow our research study over the next five years, as certainly the nation desires us to purchase research study and innovation,” he said, keeping in mind that RMIT currently has just over 100 PhD students in Vietnam collectively supervised with Melbourne faculty.
But as Vietnam aims to increasingly attract more international trainees, Thompson-Whiteside stated one difficulty is the country’s visa scheme, keeping in mind that brief preliminary visas and duplicated renewals can create unpredictability for prospective students.
Alongside worldwide branch campuses, Vietnam has likewise spent the past 20 years developing a small number of internationally oriented public universities designed to accelerate capacity structure through foreign collaborations. Among them is the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi (USTH), likewise called the Vietnam France University.
Tran Dinh Phong, vice rector of USTH, stated the organization shows a wider effort that began in the early 2000s to modernise college through international partnership.
“In the early 2000s, Vietnam began to immerse [itself] in worldwide cooperation, both in economic terms and likewise, of course, in the college and research study, so at that time the federal government had an enthusiastic program to produce brand-new university model,” he stated.
“When we speak about a brand-new university model, we attempt to gain from developed countries with exceptional higher education and to rapidly catch up the level of college and research study to support our nation’s advancement.”
USTH now informs around 4,000 trainees in science and innovation disciplines and preserves strong relate to French institutions, including going to teachers and joint programs.
A crucial chauffeur of Vietnam’s internationalisation push is language policy, with the federal government intending to establish English as a 2nd language and investing greatly in English teaching across the education system. Regardless of its French scholastic origins, USTH teaches in English.
“Our interaction language is English, so that facilitates a lot of global collaboration,” said Phong.
He said that this shift is vital if Vietnam is to broaden global mobility in both instructions. At USTH, nevertheless, two-way movement is currently emerging, with around 200 worldwide trainees arriving last year for exchanges and internships, while a similar number of Vietnamese trainees went abroad.
Phong indicates Vietnam’s more comprehensive financial improvement as a main driver of college reform, as the country looks for to move far from low-priced labour towards innovation-led development.
“We require to have innovation, we need to have technological transfer,” he told The PIE.
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