- Title
- Quality assurance in Vietnamese higher education: a systemic overview
- Creator
- Tran, Thi Nhi
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Quality assurance in higher education has become a global movement over the last three decades. In that movement, quality assurance models from established systems have been transferred to less developed countries. Vietnam is no exception to this trend. The country formed its formal quality assurance system in the early 2000s, adopting accreditation as the main strategy for promoting quality higher education. Over the last two decades, quality assurance has been a robust movement in the country, and accreditation has been implemented on a wide scale and become an obligatory activity for higher education institutions. However, the efficacy of the government-initiated quality assurance policies and their implementation has been under-researched. The research presented here reviews the Vietnamese higher education quality assurance system, investigating its efficacy from the perspectives of the key quality assurance personnel. Using mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, I collected and analysed data from three sources: 50 policy documents, a large-scale survey with 290 Vietnamese key quality assurance individuals working across the higher education system, and interviews with 23 key members, including national policy makers, accreditors, and quality assurance managers at accreditation centres and higher education institutions. Based on several theoretical frameworks and guidelines from the literature on higher education quality assurance, I developed an analytical framework to examine the Vietnamese quality assurance system from multidimensional aspects, looking at its origin and evolution, main features, and achievements and limitations over the last two decades. Bringing in the key quality assurance personnel’s perspectives, my research explored the facilitators and challenges to the development of the system. My findings reveal that Vietnamese quality assurance in higher education has gained some noticeable achievements, including a change in the perceptions of the higher education stakeholders to quality and quality assurance, the development of the quality assurance personnel who staff the system, and the established organisational structure of the system, all of which have set a firm basis for the system to develop in the future. However, my research also reveals that the system faces challenges at both the policymaking and implementation levels. Some of the major issues are low efficacy of quality assurance practice, over-ambitious plans and goals, lack of effective supervision and evaluation, low motivation, lack of independence in quality assurance, low assessment quality, shortage of qualified quality assurance personnel, and limited resources for quality assurance. The findings of the study suggest that over the past three decades, Vietnam has focussed more on external quality assurance than internal quality assurance. The study found that the degree of adoption and implementation of quality assurance varied greatly between higher education institutions due to their contextual differences. The external quality assurance policy has been implemented on a large scale while the quality assurance resources of most higher education institutions are still under-developed. As a result, except for some well-established universities that showed good practice, most of the institutions in the system adopted accreditation to comply with the requirement from the national authorities rather than the internal need for quality improvement. Accreditation, therefore, did not bring about as significant an impact on quality improvement as expected. The findings of my study suggest that categorising higher education into groups regarding contexts, and making quality assurance plans and objectives appropriate for their practical quality conditions, is crucial to strengthening the efficacy of quality assurance implementation. The study also suggests that internal quality assurance should be promoted and universities should be encouraged to build an effective internal quality assurance framework. It is recommended that the policy makers revisit quality assurance plans and make adjustments to tackle the existing issues and enhance the efficacy of the system.
- Subject
- quality assurance; accreditation; higher education; Vietnam
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1504968
- Identifier
- uon:55604
- Rights
- Copyright 2022 Thi Nhi Tran
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 234 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |