ABSTRACT
In Vietnam, people belonging to the 15-30 age group account for about 30 per cent of the population. Of this 30 per cent, university students and graduates account for a mere 2 per cent (Nguyen Van Trung 1996: 66-7). Although young people with university education make up a very small proportion of the youth population, university graduates are interesting subjects for research for two main reasons. Firstly, in the context of a modernising Vietnam, knowledge has been increasingly recognised as crucial to achieving the goal of modernisation. Thus people with higher education and knowledge, including university graduates, have been given greater attention by the state – as compared to the ‘socialist’ period before doi moi, when greater emphasis was placed upon peasant and worker youths. Hence there is now an increasing need to study young university graduates. Secondly, as university graduates tend to concentrate in large urban areas (simply due to the geographic locations of major universities in Vietnam), this segment of youth is particularly exposed to the ongoing economic changes and social transformations taking place in the country. Therefore, by studying graduates and their interactions with socio-economic developments in the country, we can gain valuable insights into the social transformations currently taking place in Vietnam.
