Vietnam - World Bank Expands its Support to Higher Education in Vietnam

August 3, 2009 — The World Bank recently approved a US$50 million credit for the Vietnam's Higher Education Development Policy Program, the Bank’s first Development Policy Lending Operation in the higher education sub-sector. In this interview, Jeffrey Waite, Lead Education Specialist and Human Development Sector Coordinator in the World Bank's Vietnam Office, provides insights into the program.

This the first DPL for Vietnam’s education sector. Instead of supporting specific investments such as school construction, teacher development, curriculum support, the Bank is transferring resources to the Government in a single tranche in recognition of the Government having put in place important measures in higher education.

Correct. The DPL recognizes the Government's implementation of its own higher education strategy, which covers the period 2006 to 2010. In implementing this strategy, the Government has carried out policy measures in the areas of university governance, financing, quality assurance and public financial management.

This isn't the first education project that the Bank has supported in Vietnam.

We have had a program in education in Vietnam since the early-90s, and in higher education since the mid-90s. Up until this DPL, we have been using combination of investment lending and analytical work to help the Government both design its policies and implement its reforms. We have now added the DPL to the range of instruments that we are using, but continue to use investment lending to provide the Government with the technical assistance it needs to prepare its policy design.

We are looking for an increase in the proportion of young people in higher education, since the Government has set itself a very ambitious target of 40% of its young people in tertiary education by 2020. In addition, we expect the quality and relevance of higher education service to be improved.

The major challenges that Vietnam faces in the higher education sector concerns the roles of the central government and the higher education institutions themselves. When only a small proportion of young people continued onto higher education, the central government was able to manage this system directly. However as the system expanded both in terms of the number of students in these institutions and in terms of the number of the institutions themselves, the central government simply could no longer manage the institutions on a day-to-day basis. The central government has to shift from being a day-to-day manager to being the “steward” of the system. As the steward, the government sets the overall policy orientation ensuring adequate and equitable financing for the sector. It ensures that information about the sector is made available to students, parents, employers and the public at large. The day-to-day management then moves to the leadership of each university or college, giving it the autonomy to decide on the staff it hires, the study programs it offers students, and the funds it allocates to different activities. This is a very big change for the Vietnamese universities and colleges and a very big challenge both for the Government and for the institutions themselves.

Although it is a very ambitious plan, Vietnam has made enormous progress in its development agenda across a large number of sectors including education. The country has achieved very impressive results in access to basic education. So while clearly it is an ambitious plan, Vietnam has a strong record in being able to achieve its ambitions.

One other challenge facing Vietnamese universities seems to be the quality of education.

Quality is a major challenge. Whenever the sector is expanding rapidly in terms of numbers, it is difficult to improve or even maintain the level of quality. The Vietnamese Government is conscious of this dilemma and is moving in the right direction, for example, in pushing for a much greater proportion of teaching faculty having doctoral degrees. That said, stronger steps will have to be taken in providing higher education institutions with greater autonomy.

Vietnam's Higher Education Sector Reform Agenda

Vietnam’s education sector has expanded rapidly, with the fastest growth taking place at the upper levels of education.

The Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) data shows that between 1992 and 2006, the percentage of the population between ages 25-55 who have not completed even the lowest level of education went from 23 percent to less than 1 percent.

Enrollment in colleges and universities has nearly doubled from some 900,000 students in 2001 to more than 1,600,000 students in 2008.

The Government details its goals for higher education in its “Higher Education Reform Agenda 2006-2020”.

The main objectives of the strategy are:

A dramatic increase in capacity to allow an increase of the participation rate in higher education (or tertiary) institutions, which implies huge investments in infrastructure and in training of new lecturers and faculty;
Simultaneous increase in quality and/or efficiency of the system;
The introduction or reinforcement of research in universities—in order better to train the future new teachers, to enrich and upgrade present teachers’ teaching and to upgrade the quality level and international visibility of Vietnamese universities; and,
Improved governance of the higher education and research system at both national and regional levels, as well as of universities.

Developing a policy environment that provides universities and colleges with adequate resources, sufficient autonomy and appropriate incentives is essential to deliver research and teaching activities to international quality standards.

This requires fundamental reforms in the areas of governance, financing, and quality assurance.

The Bank’s program of higher education operations and analytic work is designed to help the Government address these key policy areas.

World Bank Assistance

The Higher Education Development Policy Program (First Operation), a US$50.0 million Credit approved by the Board of Executive Directors on June 23, 2009, is the Bank’s first Development Policy Lending Operation in the higher education sub-sector. It is also the first of a proposed series of three such operations. This operation supports the Vietnam Government’s policies to strengthen governance, rationalize financing, improve the quality of teaching and research, improve accountability for performance, and enhance transparency in financial management within the higher education sector.

The Second Higher Education Project, financed by a US$59.4 million Credit and a US$4.8 million Japan Policy and Human Resources Development (PHRD) co-financing Grant, runs from Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 through FY2012 and has these components:

Capacity building in higher education policy development;
Capacity building for university teaching and research primarily through a competitive grants scheme;
Project management and monitoring/evaluation.

The New-Model Universities Project is scheduled to be presented to the World Bank Board in FY11, with a proposed loan amount of US$270.0 million. The project will support the establishment and development of two “new-model universities” in Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho City with these components:

Policy and regulatory framework;
Academic and research development;
Campus and facilities development;
Project management and monitoring/evaluation.

Other planned operations in the higher education sector include the Science and Technology Innovation Project (FY12) and the Private Higher Education Loan Fund Facility (FY12).