VietNamNet Bridge –  Young professionals with foreign master’s degrees and doctorates can now be found working at rice fields and livestock farms instead of air-conditioned offices.

Tran Phuong Anh and his workers

More and more young Vietnamese have decided to return home to experience challenging lives after they graduate from elite foreign schools.

Tran Phuong Anh, born in 1981, graduated from Hanoi Foreign Trade University and Yale University in the US.

Anh got a good job in Silicon Valley in the US after the graduation. However, he later returned home and started making incense sticks because he believes all Vietnamese families need the item.

Anh’s business has been growing rapidly with total revenue of VND15 billion in 2010 and VND20 billion in 2013.

He said he will maintain the incense workshop, and will return to work again, if necessary, to get money to continue making incense sticks.

Dao Thi Hang, born in 1985, was offered a scholarship for a doctoral program after she received a master’s degree in Australia. However, Hang decided to return to Quang Tri province where she was born to make fish sauce.

She dreams of bringing Vietnamese-made Thuyen Nan fish sauce to consumers around the world.

In 2008, after finishing Hanoi Agriculture University, Trinh Quoc Toan, born in 1985, became a postgraduate at Ramat Negev University in Israel and received a master’s degree.

Refusing many job opportunities, he decided to start his business in Thanh Hoa province, his home village. His VietGAP Agriculture Company Ltd, specializing in making agricultural products, has had turnover of VND1.2 billion annually.

Vo Xuan Hoa, born in 1984, known as one of two sons of the “man who possesses the most land in the western area” decided to return to home to assist his father in farming after finishing Auckland University in New Zealand.

“They (the young intellectuals) decided to return to Vietnam because of national pride,” said Professor Vo Tong Xuan, a renowned scientist, and leading rice expert in Vietnam.

“The young men, who lived and worked in developed countries, may have noticed that Vietnam lags too far behind other countries and they could not find Vietnam’s farm produce there,” Xuan said. “They wish to come back to Vietnam to contribute to the country’s economic development.

Xuan said he knows a young man who decided to settle down in Tay Ninh province after he finished a finance and banking school in the UK, because his father’s sugar cane production costs were too high, and he wanted to help make the sugar products more competitive by lowering costs.

Ngan Anh