Vietnamese universities have been advised to cooperate with foreign universities

A university lecturer in Hanoi said, however, that it was difficult for Vietnam’s schools to call for international cooperation, because many elite schools don’t have demand to expand training beyond national borders. 

The optimum principle of cooperation is that both sides can obtain benefits. Therefore, success is gained only when the capability and development levels of the two partners are similar. 

However, the lecturer thinks that it would be feasible for Vietnam’s top-tier universities to seek partners among THE’s and QS’ top 100 or top 200 universities to organize joint training programs.

Meanwhile, it is nearly impossible to arrange cooperation with schools in the top 50 and the US’s Ivy League, because the schools don’t have demand to expand their training beyond national borderlines. 

And if they have demand, they would cooperate with schools of international stature, capable of implementing cooperation programs and absorb transfers during the cooperation process, like the cases of Yale-NUS College or Cornell-Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management.

An education expert, on one hand, agreed with the opinion, on the other hand, said Vietnam still can exploit opportunities to cooperate with some leading schools. 

Vietnam’s schools not only want to seek cooperation to organize training programs, but also to improve their management capability under consultancy contracts with elite schools.

“In principle, we can spend big money to buy a management model or technology,” he explained. 

“The consultancy contract may comprise designing and building up of facilities, establishing administration system to operate schools,” he said.

The mode of cooperation would help solve questions in setting systems, especially useful in case of newly established schools which are well invested and have the ambition to become ‘giants’ after a short time. With the investment of large corporations in tertiary education, the demand exists.

However, he said that these consultancy modes won’t have direct impact on the training process or degree granting, and foreign partners won’t get directly involved in the teaching process.

In fact, many joint training programs have been running for the last few years in Vietnam. 

Students have many different choices, from 1+3, 2+2, to 3+1 training programs (they have 1, 2 or 3 years of study in Vietnam and 3, 2 or 1 years of study overseas). 

Under the programs, they can either get a bachelor’s degree granted by both Vietnamese and foreign universities or by foreign universities only.

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Mai Chi