Quyen T.N. Do

Many developing countries are in the process of restructuring their higher education system to meet their nation's socio-economic development. As their educational budget is not unlimited, working with international educational institutions has become one of the attractive solutions to improve the quality of their education and to make it relevant to meet their nation's educational demand for economic development. This paper identifies some key issues which have prevented the Vietnamese higher education system from serving effectively its country's open-door policy and provide necessary recommendations to help Vietnam overcome its shortcomings and weaknesses. The issues identified together with recommendations, on the other hand, may help some educational policy makers from developed countries select their fields of assistance or cooperation as well as to establish their long term educational strategies to deal with developing countries such as Vietnam..

The number of contact hours, one of the important institutional context factors, was examined and compared between Dutch and Vietnamese higher education at institute and student levels in Psychology and Business and/or Economics specializations. The quantity of contact hours per credit point given by institutions was investigated in a number of Dutch and Vietnamese universities. Additionally, 104 students in Groningen, the Netherlands, and 140 students in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, participated in the survey with a self-reported and self-assessed questionnaire on their study time allocation. Beside contact hours, other learning process related factors such as study activities, motivation, quality of instruction, and generic skills were examined to provide a better insight into these two systems. Results showed that Vietnamese students had significantly higher number of contact hours than Dutch students while their generic skills, motivation and time spent on independent study were a lot lower.

This chapter discusses major questions of importing foreign-born Quality Assurance models and policies into the local higher education contexts, specifically focusing on accreditation, ranking and classification (also referred to as stratification). The discussion provides insights into the evolvement of the local higher education quality assurance system and implications about how to develop a better established system in the future. Since educational model and policy borrowings have gained increased popularity, the analysis through the lens of model borrowing should be useful for local higher education policymakers in the national educational reform.

The establishment of the General Department of Educational Testing and Accreditation (GDETA), a department of the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), in 2003 laid the first foundation for the Vietnamese national quality assurance (QA) system in higher education. Since then, the system has been dominated by accreditation because other mechanisms such as audit, ranking, and benchmarking are still absent. However, the national accreditation system is still under development. At the institutional level, QA units have been set up in most universities and colleges, in many cases, simply to comply with MoET’s requirements and fulfill accreditation-related tasks. In general, they lack quality management and improvement measures. As regards internationalization, Vietnam has engaged actively in the development of QA in higher education in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and joined international QA organizations. QA activities have improved the attitudes and awarenes...

Quality Assurance (QA) is an emerging issue that has attracted the increasing interest of university leaders and administrators. However, the trend seems to be based in various motives other than quality itself. These motives have made the quality assurance of international joint programmes largely reliant on foreign partners. Non-quality intentions are, in many cases, the main drivers of international accreditation of local programmes.