Globalisation and reforming higher education in Vietnam: Policy aspirations, public institutional changes and reform imaginaries.

This thesis analyses the mediation of globalisation on higher education in Vietnam (VHE) in policy (the Agenda of reforming VHE 2006-2020–the Agenda), the universities (public institutional changes), and individual practitioners (reform imaginaries). Using the critical interpretive paradigm, it draws on Appadurai’s (2001) vernacular globalisation, Ball’s (1993) textual and discursive sides of policy, Gale’s (2003) the “who” in realising policy, Rizvi and Lingard’s (2010) globalising education policy, and Weaver-Hightower’s (2010) policy ecology. It was designed in two parts: the analysis of the Agenda and the comparative case studies of three public universities. Data include policy documents, 22 semi-structured interviews with three groups of university leaders and retired senior policy-makers, and fieldwork notes. This thesis argues for the indirect but significant influence of globalisation on the Agenda’s reform aspirations, public institutional changes, and individual perspectives. It demonstrates changes and transformations of VHE from an inward to an outward system; from the State-controlled system to the State-supervised system; from the State-owned system to the multiple-owned system; and lastly from national to global and back. Despite the Agenda’s great expectations, it is unknown to leaders of three public universities. Thus, its reform solutions remain policy aspirations whilst institutional changes are ongoing without their direct link to the Agenda. These public universities are at the threshold of transformation marked by their beginning of being autonomous institutions. If the Agenda focuses on the VHE’s future scenarios, reform imaginaries generate insight into the present unsettled practices. This study contributes to the discussion of globalisation and higher education in Vietnam where what is global about reforming VHE is present but less powerful than what is national about it. The country’s historical consequences, cultural traditions, and ideological commitments alter the nature and method of global influences that are manifested in policy and institutional changes.