DSpace at VNU: Grant Harman, Martin Hayden and Pham Thanh Nghi (eds): Reforming higher education in Vietnam: challenges and priorities

High Educ (2013) 65:781–783 DOI 10.1007/s10734-012-9551-2 BOOK REVIEW Grant Harman, Martin Hayden and Pham Thanh Nghi (eds): Reforming higher education in Vietnam: challenges and priorities Springer, Dordrecht, 2010, 23 pp Thi Tuyet Tran Published online: 21 July 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V 2012 Under the impact of globalization and the development of the knowledge economy and information technology, many countries in the developing world are struggling to reform to develop modern higher education systems (HES) to meet the new needs of industry and to increase the competitiveness in the knowledge market Many innovation movements initiated in the West such as internationalisation, privatisation, marketisation or the cooperation with industry are now adopted and have become major focuses of higher education (HE) reform in many developing countries Grant Harman, Martin Hayden and Pham Thanh Nghi’s book, which focuses on HE reform in Vietnam is a welcome contribution in this area, as it introduces and addresses quite details recent reforms in the HES of a developing country in South East Asia With the contribution of both Vietnamese and foreign scholars, the book has brought both local and international perspectives on various aspects of the Vietnamese HES Centered by the Higher Education Reform Agenda (HERA) promulgated by the Vietnamese centre government, however, the main focus of the book is not on presenting the government’s vision of what the HES is expected to become, but on the challenges it has to face in order to reach that goal The goal, as suggested in HERA, is: To carry out fundamental and comprehensive reform of HE; undertake a process of profound renews in the area of the quantity, quality and effectiveness in order to met all the demand for learning opportunities By 2020, Vietnam aims to have a HES that is advanced by international standard, highly competitive, and appropriate to the socialist-oriented market mechanism (pp 51–52) The book has 15 chapters which address most related issues related to the reform The first four chapters provide an overview of the Vietnamese HES, its history and plan for the future and address various of the reform measures proposed in HERA The detail discussion reveals the low level of development of the system with too many internal T T Tran (&) La Trobe University, No Malpas Street, Preston, Melbourne, VIC 3072, Australia e-mail: j.tran@latrobe.edu.au; tuyettt@vnu.edu.vn T T Tran Vietnam National University—Hanoi, Hanoi, Vietnam 123 782 High Educ (2013) 65:781–783 problems needed to be settled This ‘dark’ picture does not seem to support the ambitious HERA There appear significant challenges or gaps between the official aspirations and realistic expectations, between the desire to develop an internationally competitive HES and the background of a system lacking sufficient funding, a system of low quality teaching and learning and weak research capacity with strict controls and centralized governance from the centre ministry and the government The followed 11 chapters discuss these challenges in details Chapter discuss the quality of teaching and learning in HES in Vietnam and suggests that it is of no hope to enhance teaching, learning and research quality without much more investment in academic staff, i.e to upgrade their qualifications, increase their salary, reduce teaching loads, provide training and rewards to create a positive research environment in HE Following this suggestion, chapter 6, and bring about a clear picture of research and research commercialization in Vietnamese HE It is suggested that when research is not part of HE culture in Vietnam, when the understanding of intellectual property is still very limited among academic staff and students and when academic staff have too little experience with ways of commercializing scientific knowledge, attaining HERA’s reform ambitions and Vietnam’s aspiration to achieve industrialized country within the next few years (by 2020) seems to be a significant challenge for the whole system Chapter 9, 10 and 11 each presents a different way to address the problem of HE governance and management in Vietnam However, the message that the authors of these three chapters want to deliver seem to be similar that HERA involves a large number of overly ambitious and impractical objectives, given the strict, but also the weak capacity to manage the whole system of the central ministry, the lack of understanding and experience with institutional autonomy across the whole system as well as the lack of sufficient resources and of an appropriate infrastructure for institutional self-governance The Vietnamese government, through HERA, seems to try to too much too quickly It aims to develop an internationally competitive HES, while its internal problems have not settled Issues of equity, of quality accreditation, discussed in chapter 12 and 13, respectively, are among internal problems urgently needing to address to better resource different types of institutions and to control the quality of the internal system The process of internationalisation and privatisation of HE in Vietnam, as discussed in chapter 14 and 15, also face many hurdles A system with non-public HEIs who remain inferior in status and who have very little room to move within strict controls of the central ministry won’t satisfy the ever growing demand for learning in the society, and thus, will leave much room for foreign education providers The internationalisation of HE in Vietnam seems to enhance the tendency of ‘‘not just brain-drain! There is another term we should use… brain wash!’’ (p 209) This book is a valuable resource for education researchers and policy makers who want to develop their understanding of the Vietnamese HES at the current stage of development Its value not only lies on the way it touches on the very current aspects and issues of the system, on the rich information and the sharp and critical perspectives readers can approach, but more importantly, it makes explicit many implicit matters that are normally known and familiar by many Vietnamese scholars, but are not often articulated in print and are out of easy reach of popular reader hood On the other hand, this book is also a highly recommended document for Vietnamese policy makers, as it will help them to obtain objective and scholastic views, to reflect on the actual situation, and to develop a more practical plan with a clear strategic planning and also to identify priorities in plan implementing 123 High Educ (2013) 65:781–783 783 Although the book focuses on the HES in Vietnam, its descriptions and discussions seem to evoke ponderings about common characteristics of HESs in many developing countries, i.e the lack of sufficient funding, the poor infrastructure for teaching, learning and research, the weak research capacity of academic staff, the absent of research culture in HE, the centralized HE governance and the lack of practical strategic planning to step by step reform HESs The book is highly recommended, then, for policy makers, scholars and students of HE who want to benefit from the insights regarding not only Vietnamese HES, but also policies aimed at reforming HESs in developing countries in the globalisation era 123 ... chapters discuss these challenges in details Chapter discuss the quality of teaching and learning in HES in Vietnam and suggests that it is of no hope to enhance teaching, learning and research quality... central ministry won’t satisfy the ever growing demand for learning in the society, and thus, will leave much room for foreign education providers The internationalisation of HE in Vietnam seems to... urgently needing to address to better resource different types of institutions and to control the quality of the internal system The process of internationalisation and privatisation of HE in Vietnam,