00:07 29/7/24
Improving higher education in VN Higher education
 Giáo dục đại học UNIT 9
Improving performance of higher edducation in Vietnam
https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/347431588175259657/pdf/Improving-the-Performance-of-Higher-Education-in-Vietnam-Strategic-Priorities-and-Policy-Options.pdf
The link between higher education and socioeconomic development is well recognized. Specifically, higher education
supports economic growth and poverty reduction by (a) training a skilled and adaptable labor force, (b) generating new
knowledge through basic and applied research, and (c) fostering innovation through application of generated and adopted
knowledge and technology. The progress of East Asian economies in recent years illustrates a strong symbiotic
relationship among higher education, innovation, and growth through the production of research and skills. In the case of
Vietnam, higher education has a significant positive effect on household poverty and long-term earnings at the individual
level, where annualized private returns to higher education are above 15 percent, one of the highest levels in the world.
As Vietnam aspires to become an upper-middle-income country by 2035, its productivity needs to increase continuously,
which requires greater production and effective use of high-skilled manpower and science, technology, and innovation
(STI).1 Global and national mega trends are posing challenges to Vietnam’s development aspiration while also providing
the opportunity for the country to use its higher education system as a platform to transform the quality of the skilled
workforce and the relevance of research and technology transfer. Rapid technological advances and the rise of the
knowledge economy increase the demand for advanced cognitive, digital, and socio-emotional skills required for high-
value jobs; the rise of the middle class, urbanization, and aging population may enhance higher education aspirations of
Vietnamese students and their families; and risks associated with climate change and health pandemic vulnerabilities call
for adaptation and mitigation measures which require greater use of knowledge and research, as demonstrated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
There is a disconnect between Vietnam’s remarkable achievement on equitable economic growth and human development,
on the one hand, and the performance of the higher education system, on the other. Vietnam ranks 48 out of 157 countries
on the World Bank’s Human Capital Index (HCI), the best result among middle-income countries. A Vietnamese child
born today will be 67 percent as productive when s/he grows up as s/he could be if s/he enjoyed complete general education
and full health. Of the three subcomponents in the HCI, Vietnam comes out especially strong with regard to access and
quality in general education. Vietnam’s average years of schooling, adjusted for learning, is 10.2 years, second only to
Singapore among Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.
However, Vietnam’s higher education system is not ready to capitalize on this huge potential of young people coming out
of general education. Vietnam’s access to higher education, as measured by the gross enrolment rate (GER), is below 30
percent, one of the lowest among the East Asian countries. Its higher education output, as measured by the gross graduation
ratio2 (GGR), is only 19 percent, which is much lower than expected. The disconnect between the basic education output
and the higher education output for Vietnam is clearly evident from the results shown in Figure ES.1 when Vietnam stands
as an outlier when benchmarked against regional and global comparators. Vietnam needs to invest more and soon in its
higher education system if it wants to become internationally competitive by capitalizing on its younger generations. about:blank 1/1