Tiến Sĩ Strengthening the Partnership of University and Enterprises in Ha Noi, Viet Nam The Case of ULSA

Luận án tiến sĩ năm 2013
Đề tài: Strengthening the Partnership of University and Enterprises in Ha Noi, Viet Nam: The Case of ULSA
Tăng cường hợp tác giữa trường đại học và doanh nghiệp ở Hà Nội, Việt Nam: Nghiên cứu trường hợp của Trường Đại học Lao động – Xã hội
Luận án được trình bày bằng tiếng Anh


CONTENT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i
CONTENT iii
ABSTRACT vi
ABBREVIATION vii
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGRURES viii
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY 3
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 8
RESEARCH QUESTIONS 9
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES 10
HYPOTHESES 10
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 11
SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 12
DEFINITION OF TERMS 13
CHAPTER II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 16
1. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH OF UNIVERSITY - ENTERPRISE
RELATIONSHIP 16
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 28
3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 33
CHAPTER III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 39
1. RESEARCH DESIGN 39
2. POPULATION AND SAMPLING DESIGN 40
3. RESEARCH INSTRUMENT 42
4. DATA GATHERING PROCEDURE 44
5. DATA PROCESSING METHOD 45
CHAPTER IV. PRESENTATION. ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA 46
1. PROFILE OF ƯLSA 46
2. POLICIES RELATING TO UNIVERSITY - ENTERPRISE PARTNERSHIP48
3. DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION 49
3.1. Basic characteristics of respondents 49
3.2. Job history of graduated students 51
3.3. Experiences of enterprises with relation to ULSA 53
3.4. Working weaknesses of students 55
3.5. Ability and experiences of enterprises in cooperation with universities 59
3.6. Potential opportunities for ULSA in cooperation with enterprises 64
3.7. Solutions for strengthening the cooperation between ƯLSA and
enterprises 67
3.7.1. Ensure harmonious benefits for enterprises 67
3.7.2. Acknowledge the contribution by enterprises 71
3.7.3. Supplementary solutions 72
4. SUMMARY 73
CHAPTER V. SUMMARY, FINDINGS. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 74
1. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 74
2. CONCLUSION 77
3. RECOMMENDATION 78
3.1. Proposed cooperating; framework
79
3.2. Improving training curricula and changing teaching methods 80
3.3. Devoting more resources to create and maintain the partnership with
enterprises 82
3.4. Ensuring harmonious cooperating benefits for enterprises 83
3.5. Acknowledge the contribution by enterprises 84
3.6. Create formal" partnership with enterprises 84
3.7. Cooperate with other universities for strengthening university-enterprise
cooperation 85
4. LIMITATION AND FURTHER STUDY 85
BIBLIOGRAPHY ix
APPENDICES xiv
1. LETTER OF INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SURVEY xiv
2. QUESTIONNAIRE FOR LEADER OF ENTERPRISE XV
3. QUESTIONNAIRE FOR GRADUATED STUDENTS OF ULSA xxi
4. SURVEYED RESULTS OF LEADERS OF ENTERPRISES xxvi
5. SURVEYED RESULTS OF GRADUATED STUDENTS xxxvi
6. CURRICULUM VITAE xlvi



ABSTRACT
Creating and strengthening university - enterprise partnership is a very important solution for universities to archive the goal “raising the ưaining quality to meet labour demands for the socio-economic development .”.
This paper presented potential opportunities as well as solutions for University of Labour and Social affairs (ULSA) to strengthen its long-term partnership with enterprises. It can be said that universities in the economic and social field can maintain partnership with enterprises in many activities if having appropriate cooperating policies. Of all proposed solutions for strengthening the partnership with enterprises, the most important one is that universities should ensure harmonious cooperating benefits for enterprises.


CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
In the Sưategy for Education development of Vietnam in 2011-2020, the Government exposed seven limitations in the current educational system of Vietnam. This showed that Vietnamese educational quality is low, contents are heavily theoretical, and universities have not changed much into training based on demands of the society (Vietnamese Government, 2012, pp. 4-5). In this Strategy, developmental goal for vocational and university training is that “raising the ưaining quality to meet labour demands for the socio-economic development .” (Vietnamese Government, 2012, p. 9). To achieve this goal, Vietnamese universities need to fulfill many activities for improving their training programs, of which, creating and maintaining a close partnership with employers is an important one.
Employers are regarded as “indirect” customers of universities because they do not “buy” ưaining services (main products of universities) provided by universities but they “buy" working ability of graduates. That means they will buy the “outcomes” of training services. Thus, if employers do not hire graduates because they have inappropriate working ability, it may be worthless for students to take training courses provided by universities. For this reason, universities should create and maintain relationship with employers to collect information about labour markets, such as which skills and knowledge employers want employees to be trained, future. Basing on the collected information, universities can change their contents of ưaining programs, teaching methods, and so on, in such a way that provide knowledge and skills that are most-needed for students. By doing so, it will be easy for their graduated students to find jobs in which they can apply what they have been trained.
Thus, we can say that it is very important for universities to manage a good partnership with employers, of which most are enterprises. However, very few Vietnamese universities have regular relationships with enterprises. It is not unknown that Vietnamese education in general and at university level in particular has many weaknesses. One of these weaknesses is that graduated students lack skills and knowledge required in labour markets. There are many reasons for this weakness. One of which is the old way of diinking. Many universities think that they can teach what they want and students must study what they provide. Moreover, most Vietnamese universities focus too much on the short-term goal that is CO atưact students taking their current ưaining programs, but too little on the whether students can find job after graduation. As a result, universities do not often pay much attention on the relationship with employers because this needs time and money. With regard to Vietnamese enterprises, most of them are not interested in making relationship with university because they gain very few benefits from iliis relationship
University of Labour and Social affaừs (ƯLSA) is a state university under the cofflrol of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids, and Social affaừs of Vietnam. It has for ưaining programs at the bachelor level1. They are Human resource management. Accounting, Insurance, and Social work. Annually, about two thousand students graduate from the university. The statistical data of the university show that only about 70% of graduated students can find jobs within a year since the point they receive the bachelor degree, and of which, less than 50% can find jobs in the fields they studied. Most graduates, including those having jobs in theừ studying fields, gave the feedback that many topics they had studied were unuseful for their work and they needed to be rettained when starting their jobs. This shows that current training
1 The university will Sian the fifth program (business administration) in October. 2013.
programs of the university are somewhat inappropriate with demands of labour markets. There are some reasons for this problem but the main one is there is almost no participation of employers in designing ưaining programs of ULSA. The university does not have any network of cooperating employers. When the university designing or adjusting training programs, normally, there were only one or two representatives of employers. Moreover, drafts of training programs were given to them just at the beginnings of meetings. In addition, these drafts consisted of only names of subjects in training programs without detailed description of contents in each subject. Hence, their ideas about ưaining programs did not contain much value.
The last survey undertaken by ULSA to collect information about labour demands and comments on its training programs was in 2005 wiUi the participation of about three hundred employers. Since then, the university has adjusted its training programs several times without die involvement of employers. As we mentioned above, this is one (main) reason why its training programs are somewhat inappropriate, and, as a result, why its graduated students face some difficulties in finding jobs.
Realizing the importance of the ULSA’s partnership with employers, I choose the topic “Strengthening the Partnership of University and Enterprises in Ha Noiy Viet Nam: The Case of ƯLSA" for my dissertation topic. I hope it can make some small contributions for the future development of die university.
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
In modern business philosophy, the customer is regarded as die only boss of any organization. Producers should produce and sell products or services that are most appropriate to customers’ demands. All decisions of firms should be made in order to attain the ultimate goal. That is to meet customers’ needs. Or, in the other word, we



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