Policy and regulatory framework for transnational higher education in Vietnam: objectives, implementation issues, and impacts
Creators: name: Quach, Thi Ngoc Minh
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 390201
subject: Education policy
classificationCode: 440708
subject: Public administration

description: Over the last two decades, transnational higher education (TNHE) has become one of the strategic priorities in higher education policies of many nation-states. In line with this global trend, the Vietnamese Government has been an active proponent of TNHE, having introduced policy incentives and easing of restrictions to facilitate the cross-border mobility of international programs and institutions. Despite the proliferation of foreign higher education services in the Vietnamese market and growing awareness of the pivotal role of policy contexts in transnational higher education, there has been relatively little research on the TNHE policy and regulatory framework in Vietnam.

The purpose of this study is to offer a nuanced understanding of the TNHE policy and regulatory framework in Vietnam during the period of 2000 – 2020. This qualitative insider research employed policy discourse analysis and semi-structured in-depth interviews with thirty-five key informants. These informants hold portfolios in transnational education from both Vietnamese and foreign government agencies and higher education institutions. 

This study has integrated three sets of conceptual and methodological resources to develop a novel analytical framework. As a point of departure, this study borrows the concepts of actors, mechanisms, and principles (Braithwaite &amp; Drahos, 2000) in global business regulations to consider their interactions in TNHE policy. These concepts are integrated into Bacchi’s (2009) What’s the problem represented to be? framework (WPR) approach of policy analysis and the principal-agent framework.  This analysis framework has guided the analysis of three key aspects: the problem representations in the TNHE policy and regulatory framework, emerging issues in the implementation of the TNHE policy and regulatory framework, and the policy impacts on the shape of TNHE delivery in Vietnam.

 Iterative analysis reveal five problem representations about TNHE in the Vietnamese policy and regulatory framework: (i) inadequate public funding for higher education services development; (ii) unsatisfactory domestic academic quality due to unalignment with international standards; (iii)  unsatisfactory quality of TNHE provision due to lack of resources and lenient regulations; (iv) access to land for campus construction being a barrier for foreign HE investors; (v) influences of foreign HE on the political attitudes and cultural awareness of the Vietnamese TNHE students. 

This study’s findings demonstrate that the WPR framework provides a discursive lens of policy analysis to demystify the conceptual logics and underlying assumptions that shape the policy and regulation proposals. In addition, the WPR approach offers a critical perspective in policy analysis by uncovering the potential discursive, subjectification, and lived effects produced by the problem representations, and the issues silenced in the problem representations, which have been neglected by policymakers. I argue that the discursive and subjectification effects have positioned foreign higher education at a superior level to domestic higher education in terms of funding and quality. The current research also identified a path dependence in the TNHE regulatory framework, which heavily focuses on the pre-delivery phase rather than in-delivery and/or post-delivery phases. I argue that the current regulatory framework has concentrated on bureaucratic process for surveillance and formality with limited value.

The study also identified emerging issues in the implementation of TNHE policy and regulatory framework, such as policy ambiguity, cumbersome bureaucracy, lack of effective coordination between government agencies, limitations in monitoring TNHE, and limitations in governance capacity. I argue that these implementation issues have led to variations of policy interpretation between different individuals and government agencies and hence jeopardised the effective governance of TNHE in Vietnam. Additionally, evidence from this study shows that the impact of TNHE on domestic higher education reform has been marginal with imbalanced distributions of TNHE disciplines, limited research collaborations and limited spill-over of TNHE curriculum and pedagogy. I argue that this limited impact can partly be attributed to the reluctance to change and the absence of a feasible action plan to integrate TNHE on a wider scale at the institutional and national levels.

Overall, this study makes significant contributions in three areas.  Firstly, it offers an in-depth analysis of the TNHE policy and regulatory framework in Vietnam, unlocks the black box of policymaking, uncovers implementation issues, and improves understanding of the TNHE policy and regulation impacts. It therefore significantly contributes to the scholarly understanding of the field of TNHE and policy studies. Secondly, this study contributes to theoretical and methodological development by providing a contextual application of the integrated use of three theoretical frameworks that have previously been mainly used in Western contexts. Finally, research findings and the relevant implications generated in this study are important for the future establishment of strategies and policies to guide the development of TNHE in Vietnam.