9 - Market-led Globalization and Higher Education: The Case of Đà Nẵng University

Summary

This chapter explores impacts of globalization on higher education in Vietnam through a case study of Da Nang University (hereafter Da Nang University, or DU). Informed by literature on globalization and based on a survey of 240 DU academic and administrative staff, as well as indepth interviews, the study aims to clarify DU's responses to globalization and how globalization processes are affecting the university's lecturers', researchers', and administrators' attitudes towards, and understanding of, higher education. The analysis finds DU operating within two institutional responses to globalization; a top-down response that emanates from the central government authority; and a bottom-up response, which has developed within DU itself. Top-down responses to the globalization of higher education in Vietnam include the emergence of a new framework for the governance of higher education that promotes greater reliance on and responsiveness to market forces among universities and greater institutional autonomy, within certain limits. DU's own response to globalization has been characterized by efforts to improve the educational quality of the institution through a more commercial model of higher education that makes use of spin-off enterprises and specialized programmes oriented to the globalizing local economy.

This study focuses on only one university, but is suggestive of how universities and colleges across Vietnam are conducting their own reform and development plans, with varying degrees of autonomy from the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). The analysis highlights some opportunities and risks pertaining to economic, cultural, and political processes underway at DU that are associated with globalization.

GLOBALIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Globalization may be defined as the intensification of social ties across borders. Globalization is surely not new, but it is undeniable that globalization has intensified in recent decades owing to political and economic reasons, as well as certain technological advances. Contemporary globalization can be understood as “market-led” to the extent that market institutions are driving global integration. On the other hand, “market-led” globalization has emerged within a specific and competitive interstate system — and is therefore political.