ABSTRACT
This book explores the implementation of soft skills in Vietnamese universities and identifies the challenges facing it. This final chapter will synthesize findings of previous chapters and discuss implications for successful implementation of soft skills in higher education. Generally, contextual factors appear to be a strong influencer. The existence of several concurrent institutional reforms, a lack of curriculum autonomy, and insufficient experience in executing curriculum changes confuse university leaders, thus slowing down the progress of the implementation. In many universities, the implementation is left to the YUA and skills teachers, with little institutional leadership. Despite differences in selecting soft skills to impart, the implementation is conceptualized as developing work-readiness skills for students. A student-centered approach, including work-integrated learning, is adopted to deliver work-readiness to students, but it is limited because of teacher disengagement and a lack of connection with industries. Such university–industry disconnect also reduces the effectiveness of soft-skills development via the YUA’s extracurricular activities. This chapter argues that curriculum autonomy, extra-curricular activities, institutional leadership, and university–industry linkages need to be enhanced for the advancement of soft skills.
