Quality Assurance in Vietnamese Higher Education by Cuong Huu Nguyen & Mahsood Shah

Author:Cuong Huu Nguyen & Mahsood Shah
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030268596
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Drivers’ Impact on Vietnam Higher Education Accreditation

Massification in higher education, cooperation with global agencies (e.g., UNESCO and World Bank), international agencies (e.g., INQAAHE) and regional agencies (e.g., APQN, AUN-QA, and SEAMEO), and changes in the Higher Education Law have resulted in the improvement in higher education accreditation.

Achievements

Although higher education accreditation in Vietnam is still in an early stage, initial achievements will lay the foundation for future improvement. Six recent QA achievements are the establishment of a national QA agency, general department of education testing and accreditation (GDETA), the development of regulations relating to accreditation activities for Vietnam’s HEIs, the completion of a horizontal structure for the QA system, the establishment of four public and one private center for accreditation to be responsible for external reviews, professional development for academic staff to conduct external and internal quality assurance activities, the establishment of QA units within all HEIs, and the implementation of the National Accreditation Plan for higher education in Vietnam to 2020 (Do et al., 2017; Le & Hayden, 2017; Nguyen, Evers, & Marshall, 2017). The implementation of institutional and program AUN-QA standards for higher education has enabled the engagement of QA units within universities to conduct internal quality assurance (IQA) activities such as monitoring institutional performance, including students’ progress, pass rates, dropout rates, employers’ feedback, and alumni’s feedback, and then communicating such feedback into intuitional activities to make quality improvement decisions (Pham, 2019). An IQA system generally has three main functions: monitoring, evaluating, and improving quality. Some HEIs are deploying an ISO quality management system to more effectively manage their documentation and filing system. Some HEIs have adopted the MoET’s standards as a guide for quality management (Nguyen, Evers, & Marshall, 2017). Whichever approach is taken, all the HEIs attempt to improve the quality of student learning.

The second achievement is in making progress toward implementation of a neoliberal QA approach. First, educators and lawmakers have worked on developing a policy that provides more autonomy to the HEIs. In addition, financial support from the World Bank has enabled piloting the implementation of autonomy practices. This aid is aimed at preparing Vietnamese HEIs to be more responsible and accountable for the quality of student learning. Also, since 2018, Vietnamese HEIs have been implementing the translation of AUN-QA standards version 2.0 for institutional accreditation, reflecting further progress in establishing a neoliberal QA approach. This set of accreditation standards follows the conceptual framework of Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA). To work on the PDCA process effectively, institutions must have enough autonomy to state their mission, operationalize the mission into strategic planning, set measurable goals and objectives, collect suitable assessment data, and then allocate appropriate resources to achieve the goals. This quality improvement model aligns with the current assessment movement in USA for the past thirty years (Suskie, 2018). Assessment movement served as a milestone in US accreditation standards to move toward outcome-oriented standards (Gaston, 2014). This implied the initial achievements from Vietnam accreditation follow not only with the current trend of accreditation in the regions but also with developed countries.

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