The Parallel Governance System in Vietnamese Higher Education Administration

Abstract

  This paper clarifies the relationship among the state, universities and colleges (higher education institutions) in Vietnam, focusing on the authority of various ministries to govern higher education institutions. This is done through multiple analyses of higher education administration characteristic to Vietnam, which is referred to as the “parallel governance” common to older socialist countries. Parallel governance means that the central educational ministry and other central ministries have the power to establish and manage higher education institutions in their own ways, and that other ministries also manage higher education institutions as educational authorities. This paper provides some viewpoints as to why Vietnam has maintained parallel governance in its transition from a centrally planned economy to a market based economy, while China has changed its traditional structure of parallel governance in its transition process. It furthermore explores the roles universities are expected to play in Vietnam.

  In the first section, on the basis of the above research question, changes in higher education administration and the structure of parallel governance in China are discussed, in order to provide a comparative perspective with higher education administration in Vietnam. Mainly after its transition, China changed its structure of parallel governance in that almost all higher education institutions, which had been managed by central ministries, were transferred to control under local governments. As part of this process higher education institutions have been autonomous as a whole.

  In the second section, corresponding to the discussion about the change in the structure of parallel governance in China, national policies and official documents pertaining to the higher education system in Vietnam are considered, focusing on the process of introducing and developing a parallel governance system in Vietnam. Vietnam learned from and introduced Soviet methods during 1956-1965 in North Vietnam as a first step, and just before and after reunification, Vietnam decided to introduce a parallel governance system into former South Vietnam with the provision of the “Decision on urgent problems about universities network” issued in 1976. From a quantitative perspective, however, Vietnam has maintained a parallel governance system with consistency throughout its transition period. Many newly established higher education institutions have come under the control of other ministries, leading to the maintenance of shared governance. In this situation, other than national universities (Dai hoc Quoc gia), not all higher education institutions have become autonomous in Vietnam.

  In the third section, taking into consideration the opinion of the Ministry of Education that the shared governance system should be dismantled and that universities should be autonomous as a whole, the authority of other ministries to govern higher education institutions under their controls is analyzed from both an institutional aspect and reality of the situation. In so doing, first, the stipulations of regulations as they are applied to other ministries are considered. These include the following: (1) the “decree on the standard of establishing universities and occupational secondary schools”, issued in 1963, and (2) the “decree on regulations about national responsibility to govern educational activities” issued in 2004 and 2010.

  Fourth, in addition to these institutional analyses, with a view to extract the principle of maintaining parallel governance in Vietnam, data obtained from interviews with persons from the ministry relevant to water resources and agricultural development, the National Institute of Educational Management, and The Vietnam Institute of Educational Science are considered. (View PDF for the rest of the abstract)