Higher education internationalization in Vietnam - unintended socio-political impacts of joint programs seen as special free academic zones

Abstract

During the last decades, Joint Programs, a model of transnational higher education, have enjoyed tremendous increase Vietnam. In this model, all the curricula, textbooks and other teaching materials are provided by foreign partners; all subjects are taught fully in foreign languages; foreign lecturers teach a part of the academic programs; the domestic lecturers are recommended by the local institutions but must be approved by the partner universities. The domestic lecturers, in their teaching, are required to deliver accredited courses in accordance to the partners’ curricula and subject outlines. Assessment process and quality assurance are controlled by the partner universities. Upon completion of their programs, students are awarded degrees of the partners. The underlying motivation of the JPs basically economic: income generation for the providers and market-friendly human resource for the country-receivers. However, under Vietnamese historical and socio-political conditions, the JPs come to play an unexpected role similar to that of the Special Free Economic Zones (SFEZ) in economy. Being intrinsically free academic oases, they allow the essential ideas of academic freedom to be realized despite the limitations of national higher education systems due to specific historical socio-political conditions.