OUTBOUND STUDENT MOBILITY

These fast-evolving developments have implications for international credential evaluation and student recruitment in Vietnam. To better understand these changes, this article describes current trends and developments in Vietnamese education and student mobility and provides an overview of the Vietnamese education system.

Commuters in Ho Chi Minh City

OUTBOUND STUDENT MOBILITY    

Vietnam is currently one of the most dynamic outbound student markets worldwide, trailing mega sending countries like China and India only in sheer size. Between 1999 and 2016, the number of outbound Vietnamese degree students exploded by fully 680 percent, from 8,169 to 63,703 students (UNESCO Institute of Statistics). Outbound degree mobility in China, by comparison, grew by 549 percent during the same period, while the number of outbound Indian degree students increased by only 360 percent.

This drastic increase in Vietnamese mobility reflects the country’s swift economic growth, as well as of the shortcomings of its education system. Common outbound mobility drivers, such as an emerging middle class able to afford study abroad and rapid massification of education coupled with limited access to high-quality education, are prominent in the country. Vietnam has the fastest growing middle class in Southeast Asia, projected to grow to anywhere between 33 and 44 million people by 2020, depending on the estimate. Tertiary enrollments, meanwhile, tripled between 1999 and 2015. The number of youths seeking higher education in Vietnam has increased significantly, swelling the ranks of potential mobile students. Given Vietnam’s economic growth projections, student mobility is bound to increase in the years ahead, especially as the country seeks to internationalize its economy and education system.

Access and Quality Concerns

Access limitations and quality problems in Vietnam are also factors facilitating outbound mobility. Despite a growing number of new higher education institutions, Vietnam’s education system does not sufficiently absorb the burgeoning youth population of a country in which 37 percent of the population is below the age of 25.  Vietnamese universities reportedly only had capacity for one-third of applicants in past years. Merely 6.7 percent of Vietnamese above the age of 25 held tertiary degree attainment in 2009, a considerably lower percentage than in other regional countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines.

Over the past decades, the fast-paced growth of the education system has intensified quality problems at overcrowded universities and led to the mushrooming of low-quality private providers. Harvard researchers Vallely and Wilkinson in 2008 described the Vietnamese education system as being in a state of crisis, characterized by international isolation, a lack of high-quality universities, inadequate foreign language training, bureaucratic obstacles, and curricula that do not prepare students for entry into the labor force. According to recent Vietnamese media reports, the majority of new university graduates are presently unable to find work, often due to a lack of skills.

These shortcomings are likely to motivate aspiring Vietnamese students to seek education abroad. Another push factor is the country’s accelerating demand for English language education, which is, as of now, not sufficiently addressed by the overburdened Vietnamese system, even though the government in 2016 directed public universities to introduce English as a second language of instruction.

The government, now more keen to promote internationalization, recently expanded a number of scholarship programs. The so-called 911 project, launched in 2013, for instance, is slated to fund study abroad of 10,000 Ph.D. candidates until 2020 with up to USD $15,000 annually per student. Despite these increases in funding, however, the vast majority of Vietnamese outbound students were, as of recently, still self-funded. While scholarships awarded by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education were, as of 2016, predominantly given to students going to Russia, self-funded students prefer Western destinations. More than 60 percent of Vietnamese mobile degree-seeking students currently opt to study in English-speaking Western countries, according to the data provided by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics.

Study Destinations

The U.S. has, over the past decade, become the most popular destination choice among Vietnamese students enrolled in degree programs abroad, despite the high costs of study in the U.S. and the legacy of the Vietnam War. Fully 30 percent of outbound Vietnamese degree students (19,336) studied in the U.S. in 2015 (UIS).[1] The Open Doors data of the Institute of International Education, which includes both degree and non-degree seeking students, shows that enrollments of Vietnamese students surged by a remarkable 1,009 percent between 2000/01 and 2016/17, making Vietnam at present the 6th largest sender of foreign students to the United States.

There are currently 22,438 Vietnamese students enrolled at U.S. institutions, predominantly at the undergraduate level. Many of them study at community colleges, where Vietnamese constitute the second largest group of foreign students, accounting for almost 10 percent of all international enrollments. Business majors are the preferred choice among Vietnamese students (30 percent of enrollments).

Surveys indicate that Vietnamese students consider the U.S. a “scientifically advanced country” with an “excellent higher education system” and a “wide range of schools and programs,” even though high costs remain a major concern for many students. Beyond that, student mobility to the U.S. also appears to be influenced by existing migrant networks – the largest numbers of Vietnamese students are enrolled at institutions in California and Texas, the two U.S. states with the highest concentration of Vietnamese immigrants.

The next most popular study destinations among Vietnamese degree students include Australia (13,147 students in 2015 as per the UIS), Japan (6,071 students in 2014) and France (5,284 students in 2015). With the exception of France, where enrollments remained relatively flat, the number of Vietnamese degree students in these countries has increased strongly in recent years, if at smaller growth rates than in the United States. In Australia, the number of students increased by 75 percent between 2009 and 2015, while in Japan the number grew 110 percent between 2009 and 2014. Canada also experienced strong growth – the number of Vietnamese students jumped by 203 percent between 2005 and 2015, according to the Canadian government.

It should be noted that the Japanese government reports vastly higher international student numbers (53,807 Vietnamese students in 2016) than the UIS and could, by some measures, be considered the primary study destination of Vietnamese students. But the Japanese statistics include a variety of different student categories in non-degree programs, including students enrolled in language training institutes and university-prep programs. The number of tertiary students is much smaller: 25,228 Vietnamese students studied at Japanese language training institutes, for instance.