Being there matters: Personal lessons from a week in Vietnam
Throughout the majority of my career, I have been fortunate to travel across the world, mostly in Asia, the Middle East, Australia, and North America - and to meet people from an enormous range of backgrounds. Now, approaching 35 years in international education, a recent trip to Vietnam allowed this rural Northern Irishman to reflect on those experiences and on how the world I roamed in the mid-1980s is changing and how it’s changed me. It has been the privilege of my professional life to have been able to spend - even fleeting moments - exploring other cultures, traditions, people, shooting the breeze, and extending my own boundaries of understanding.
The late chef, traveler, and creator of Parts Unknown, Anthony Bourdain’s, philosophy has a powerful personal resonance.
“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”
I’m no Marco Polo, but for those who know me, I have tried to find time between meetings to find time to explore my own parts unknown - to indulge in the simple act of planting myself on a plastic stool, drinking a cold beer while snacking on equally cold pigs’ ears - as I did one memorable evening with a colleague in a local neighborhood in Kaoshiung in Taiwan. So, when I get the opportunity, I will grab my camera and try to spend at least one day exploring the city, chat with locals, asking questions, and adding color to the data which informs my professional assessments.
It has allowed me to gain a flimsy perspective and an understanding of the worlds our students, their parents, and advisors live in. The ability to strike up random conversations, relish in the kindness of strangers, and share my own experiences provides invaluable context. It opens my world and reminds me of the responsibilities we have to help young people open theirs.
Like most aspects of modern life, technology, and especially the ubiquity of smartphones has transformed my experiences in ways I could barely have imagined 30-plus years ago. No longer, is my experience limited by my ability to speak a few words of the local language or to recognize street signs if they’re not in a Roman script. Working in China back in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was almost impossible to navigate cities without a local guide - and, in extremis, a handful of business cards from the hotel with the address in Chinese which the hapless me could hand to a local taxi driver and hope for the best. Or trying to navigate the city rail transit network in Tokyo with zero knowledge of Japanese kanji characters.
On my brief visit to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Apple Maps ensured I could wander down the most obscure alleys without ever getting truly lost. The guesswork of finding directions to meetings or to various spots in the city has vanished with the advent of Uber - or its local equivalents like Grab and GoJek across Southeast Asia. Google Maps has equally taken the guesswork out of local eating places, and I carry the entire anthology of Lonely Planet and Rough Guide travel guides in the palm of my hand.
In some ways, rather like GPS in cars, removing the jeopardy of getting lost has also dulled my concentration and limited the attention I pay to the environment around me. So, these visits become even more important.
Rather like the technology opening up my ability to navigate, access to data - student mobility trends, economic forecasting and Gross Enrolment ratios from the OECD has given us a sophisticated understanding of how and where to meet surging demand for tertiary education. But, being there enriches that understanding in ways that feel quite visceral.
VIETNAM ON THE RISE
Just this week, NVIDIA, the global chip maker announced a massive investment in AI research in Vietnam. The CEO, Jensen Huang, (An Oregon State University alumnus) marked the occasion by sharing a beer and some street food with the Vietnamese Prime Minister in Ha Noi - surely a nod to Anthony Bourdain’s most famous episode of Parts Unknown, slurping noodles and drinking cold beer with President Obama in Vietnam.
Vietnam has been on a wildly impressive economic trajectory over the past 30 years. Since the “Doi Moi”, translated as “Open Door” policies were introduced in 1986, the country has transformed from one of Asia’s poorest to one of the fastest growing. Its population, approaching 100 million, has grown its per capita GDP sixfold - and the country is identified by the Economist Intelligence Unit as one of the world’s most attractive places to do business. It’s no wonder NVIDIA is making such large investments.
EDUCATION AT THE HEART OF THE TRANSFORMATION
Vietnam recognized that investing in its human capital through education is the key to unlocking economic prosperity. The country has enjoyed spectacular success at elevating education standards for primary and secondary level students. Its secondary school students outperform Thailand and Malaysia in standardized PISA tests. They also outperform Canadian and UK students by the same measures.
In a recent feature in the Economist, much of this success has been attributed to well-managed schools and the value given to the teaching profession. All of this is true - but, it still lags behind its peers at the tertiary level. According to a report from the World Bank,
“Tertiary education faces challenges, with a gross enrollment rate of 30-35%, limited capacity, uneven quality, and a skills mismatch with labor market demands. While top universities have progressed, smaller institutions struggle with outdated curricula and limited resources."
“Workers are plentiful in Vietnam but talented managers are rare. So are skilled technicians. Although Vietnam already punches well above its income level for schooling, its university and vocational training programs need a boost. Michael Nguyen, the country head of Boeing, an aerospace giant that sources some parts in Vietnam, suggests firms such as his could work closely with universities to tailor training to what they need. If Vietnam is to grow as rich as China, let alone Japan, South Korea or Taiwan, it will have to invest not just in infrastructure, but also in its people.”
All of this means the opportunities to support tertiary development in Vietnam either through transnational partnerships or by providing Vietnamese students with opportunities to pursue studies overseas are immense.
Parents There is another factor, not as regularly explored - which is simply that parents and young people ascribe more value to the impact of an education than is the case in most other countries.
A research report quoted this week in the Vietnam Express reveals that parents are allocating phenomenal sums to their children’s education - especially in English. An extract illustrates the scale of investment.
“Families in major cities allocate 47% of their budget to education, with spending growing by 7% annually from 2017 to 2022. A Q&Me survey found that 54% of Vietnamese children attend extra classes 2-3 days a week, with English being the primary focus both in and out of school.”
The Varkey Foundation commissioned research, published in 2018 which showed that Vietnam is second only to India in the amount of time parents devote to support their children’s education.
Conversations with, Zak Custis, a 24-year-old British expatriate teacher working in Ho Chi Minh City explained the hunger and desire for parents to invest in their children’s education - and especially learning English. His classes, which are delivered in the evenings are full of students doing additional learning shifts, having spent all day at school. As I stopped for a coffee, the waitress serving me explained she is working every hour outside of her studies to fund overseas study. Both serve to reinforce the sheer importance of education and scale of ambition - as much as reading any number of market analyses. Being there transforms my understanding of the opportunities and the challenges we need to address in meeting student aspirations and demands.
BEING THERE MATTERS MORE THAN EVER
And that is difficult - or at least it has been for many universities. This is why we are investing in enhancing our presence on behalf of our partners. In the space of four days, I saw the States of Queensland and Western Australia launch major education promotion campaigns in Ho Chi Minh City, US universities hosting information sessions, and evidence of German and other Asian institutions promoting their offer to Vietnamese students. They are assaulted with choice. Seductive overseas study offers dazzle from the digital billboards all over the city.
I did not set out to write an advertorial for INTO’s University Access Centres - which incidentally have just this week picked up a gong from the British Council for the best IELTS testing centre in Vietnam/HoChi Minh City. And nor is this intended to be.
But, I have been bowled over by the sophistication of our teams, the depth of their knowledge, their hospitality and just how vital they are in keeping ours and our partners’ fingers on the pulse of one of the world’s most dynamic study abroad markets.
In the space of the week I was there, they hosted a senior leadership delegation from the University of Western Australia, supported Thomas Jefferson University from the United States and the University of East Anglia in the UK - in their market launch activities, scheduled market briefings, delivered presentations to international schools in Ho Chi Minh City, arranged a series of agent visits, scheduled career development activities for returning Vietnamese alumni and, conducted immediate follow up on behalf of all of our partners. More importantly, they provided us with local insight and up-to-date intelligence, helping us translate our propositions into messages they know resonate with Vietnamese students and their parents.
They are an incredibly talented, hospitable, insightful, and ambitious group of individuals and I for one am immensely grateful that we can call on their support. For anyone who wants support in engaging with this amazing country, and exploring its potential, I simply cannot commend them highly enough.
In a country where people invest so much in their education, it feels to me that the least we can do is be there for them. And our teams stand ready to help you do just that. Oh, and if you do want to find the best place in Ho Chi Minh City to sit on a plastic chair and nurse an ice-cold Bia Saigon, they have that covered too.