ABSTRACT
The contemporary approach to internationalization of higher education in Vietnam, which has been quite consistent since the early 1990s, is driven by economic development imperatives and the government’s desire to strengthen the country’s political and economic relationships with a wide range of trading partners. This differs markedly from previous eras in which Vietnam’s higher education system was heavily influenced by a series of major powers for most of the country’s history, with long-standing Chinese Confucian traditions overlaid in the early 20th century by French colonial dominance, and later by the Soviet Union, which played a huge role in the creation of the national higher education system (Welch, 2010). These bilateral relationships were profoundly unbalanced, with Vietnam dominated politically and culturally by much more powerful states, and the Vietnamese higher education system in each period closely modelled on that of the major power of the time. In contrast, since the collapse of the Soviet bloc Vietnam has proactively cultivated extensive and diversified educational relationships with many countries, both in the region (most notably Japan and ASEAN member states) and further afield, including with the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Russia. As a consequence, the direct influence of any one of these states is diminished compared with previous eras, and Vietnam, like its partners, finds itself engaging with the same set of global challenges and policy trends. For Vietnam, internationalization of higher education since the 1990s has been primarily a means of integrating the country more deeply into the global economy and enhancing national competitiveness through the transfer of knowledge and skills from abroad.
