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Higher Education in Vietnam Shows Steady Improvement

Improving Higher Education in Vietnam

While Vietnam has seen a gradual boost in young Vietnamese citizens attending college, the numbers for higher education in Vietnam have been irregular from year to year. In 2017, Vietnam partnered with the World Bank in order to create plans to improve its educational status for students wishing to attend college and vocational training establishments.

College enrollment in Vietnam has amplified significantly since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Vietnam’s higher education enrollment went from just 10 percent in 2000 to 16 percent in 2005, rising even higher to 25 percent in 2013. Vietnam saw its highest college enrollment status for both sexes in 2014, at a whopping 30 percent. However, in 2015, the rate for tertiary school attendance fell to 28 percent.

Vietnam has produced durable objectives for a college education by creating the Education Development Strategic Plan for the years 2008 to 2020, as well as the Higher Education Reform Agenda. USAID has partnered with Vietnamese universities and private divisions to invigorate higher education in Vietnam.

USAID collaborates with Harvard Medical School, Harvard Ash Center and Arizona State University, along with three universities in each region of Vietnam to restore the health personnel, STEM curriculums and any ongoing or subsequent demands that the higher educational system faces. Through these plans, Vietnam has seen quality advances in educational performance, literacy and opportunities for educational growth.

The country has also seen an immense request for more vocational and job training options. ICEF Monitor reports that in order for Vietnam to see economic growth, it needs to boost its employment ability rates by at least 50 percent. Industrial employment opportunities are growing in Vietnam as the country continues to build its technical job options in infrastructure. The Asian Development Bank is acknowledging Vietnam’s struggles in job training and is providing reform projects and contributing building resources.

In May 2017, the World Bank approved $155 million in financing to bolster research, teaching and the institutional quantity of three sovereign collegiate academies. The funding will help to improve Vietnam’s higher learning institutes. According to the World Bank’s website, the plan will have a positive impact on over 150,000 students and 3,900 faculty representatives.

The schools receiving the funding are Vietnam’s National University of Agriculture, the University of Science & Technology and the Industry University of Ho Chi Minh City. Aside from these three prominent institutions, around 600,000 students and 27,000 administrators and professors from other colleges will have the chance to expand their learning assets by being granted access to digital learning environments and libraries through the National Economics University.

Higher education in Vietnam is on the right track to continue providing opportunities and job training for its citizens that wish to create a better country through optimistic and thriving learning environments. Vietnam still has a long road ahead of it to provide higher educational access to everyone, but the current programs and resources provided to college students show a positive change for Vietnam’s future college scholars.

– Rebecca Lee

Photo: Flickr

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Innovative Ways Universities are Fighting Poverty

fighting poverty
Many university presidents and college students alike have taken it upon themselves to help fight for those less fortunate than them. From creating chapters of organizations like ONE and conducting research for the benefit of medicine, universities have played a major role in shifting the scale of poverty over the years.

The Economist once said Africa was the “hopeless continent,” but after years of innovation, the same magazine has deemed it “Africa Rising.” One way colleges and universities play a significant role in this is by partnering with global nonprofits.

Universities originally began creating partnerships to support low-income students and help them carve a secure pathway to college, but in doing so, they also managed to foster relationships with these nonprofits that have blossomed into much bigger roles.

Much of the research conducted by students and professors has also contributed to aiding those living in poverty. Many universities, such as Stanford, UC Davis and Columbia University have designated research departments for research on global poverty.

Columbia University has The Earth Institute, which focuses on a magnitude of projects ranging from agricultural sustainability and global poverty mapping to economic growth in underserved communities.

Their Millennium Villages Project, led by The Earth Institute, United Nations Development Programme and the Millennium Promise, a charity dedicated to fighting poverty, focuses their efforts on reducing global poverty by helping rural African villages become more economically and agriculturally sustainable.

The Center for Poverty Research at the University of California at Davis dedicates their time to training scholars to combat poverty. Their research net encompasses topics like health, education and the intergenerational transmission of poverty, which studies how poverty can be transferred from parent to child.

The Center is one of three poverty research facilities focused on using this research net to decrease poverty. The other two centers are comprised of the University of Kentucky and the University of Wisconsin.

In February of 2014, Stanford launched a new research facility focused on ending global poverty called the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (SEED).

SEED’s initiatives focus on using entrepreneurship, economics and business innovation to help create new markets and job opportunities in underdeveloped communities to help them rise out of poverty.

The program grants researchers at Stanford sums of money to conduct interdisciplinary research focused on poverty. SEED is housed in Stanford’s graduate school of business and has so far dedicated over ten million dollars to its research.

Lastly, universities contribute to fighting poverty through action-based organizations that use their efforts to create awareness, raise money and advocate for the alleviation of poverty.

For example, universities around the world continue to use their resources to end poverty, and with their efforts can help Africa go from “Africa Rising” to an economically and agriculturally stable continent.

– Julia Hettiger

Sources: University of California, Davis, Columbia University, Stanford University

Photo: Flickr