STRENGTHENING THE PARTNERSHIP OF UNIVERSITY AND ENTERPRISES IN HA NOI, VIET NAM: THE CASE OF ULSA AN ABSTRACT RESEARCH PAPER PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL SOUTHERN LUZON STATE UNIVERSITY, LUCBAN, QUEZON, PHILIPPINES IN COLLABORATION WITH THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY, SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DOCTORAL DEGREE IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION By NGUYEN XUAN HUONG - RICARDO July, 2013 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In the Strategy 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 training 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 University of Labour and Social affairs (ULSA) is a state university under the control of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids, and Social affairs of Vietnam It has four training 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 their studying fields, gave the feedback that many topics they had studied were unuseful for their work and they needed to be retrained when starting their jobs This shows that current training 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 training programs of ULSA The The university will start the fifth program (business administration) in October, 2013 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 Realizing the importance of the ULSA’s partnership with employers, I choose the topic “Strengthening the Partnership of University and Enterprises in Ha Noi, Viet Nam: The Case of ULSA” for my dissertation topic STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The research problem in this dissertation can be stated as follow: ULSA’s weak partnership with enterprises leads to the incompatibility between what their graduates have studied and what they need for job RESEARCH OBJECTIVES The main objective of this study is to develop strategies that will strengthen the partnership of ULSA and enterprises in Hanoi that will improve the training quality provided by the university Specifically, the study sought to: • Characterize and analyze the internal and external factors affecting the quality of trainings provided by ULSA • Identify, define and analyze the mismatch of the training courses provided by ULSA with what is needed by the industries • To identify approaches that will increase the training quality provided by ULSA CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH OF UNIVERSITY – ENTERPRISE RELATIONSHIP After reviewing some local and foreign literature, some brief conclusions can be drawn out as follows: • The importance of university-enterprise relationship has been realized in many countries, including Vietnam Universities and enterprises can gain many benefits if they have close relationships with each others • University-enterprise cooperation have often been examined in the science and technological field It is shown that universities play a very important role in technological innovations for enterprises • Very few researches have been done about university-enterprise linkages in the social field, especially, in Vietnam • The government play an very important role in promoting university- enterprise partnership • The university-enterprise partnership can be long-term only if both parties can gain hamonious benefits from the parnership • In order to create the most appropriate university-enterprise partnership, each university should consider about its specific conditions about training fields, financial status… etc., as well as its local and national environment THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK University-enterprise relationship can be thought as a special kind of provider- customer relationship (CRM) However, up to now, there has been no theory for this kind of relationship Thus, we will examine some basic contents of customer relationship management as the theoretical framework of the study CRM is an integrated approach to identifying, acquiring, and retaining customers By enabling organizations to manage and coordinate customer interactions across multiple channels, departments, lines of business, and geographies, CRM helps organizations maximize the value of every customer interaction and drive superior corporate performance The primary goal of CRM is to improve long-term growth and profitability through a better understanding of customer behaviour According to Buttle (2009), there are four types of CRM and each has its own dominant characteristics, namely, Strategic, Operational, Analytical, and Collaborative CRM CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK External factors Government policies affecting university-enterprise relationship Training activities - Improving curriculum - CEOs of enterprises give lectures - Participating in colloquium defense - Practical activities - Seminars - Scholarship - Facilities - Job placement for graduates ULSA Enterprises Proposed benefits - Advices (if any) - Position in the Website - Acknowledgement of the contribution - Sending card on special occasions - (small) Payment - Inform of new policies - Proposals to Authorities for preferred policies for enterprises Internal factors - Prestige - Operational features - Recognition and experience The conceptual framework shows that enterprises can participate in many training activities to help ULSA to improve it training quality Enterprises can help ULSA by giving comments on its training curriculums, giving lectures to its students, etc In order to attract enterprises participate in its training program, the university will offer some preferred policies to enterprises Of these policies, the most important one is that the university desires to receive helps and respect all helps from enterprises Moreover, the university will acknowledge the contribution of enterprises by presenting their name in its website and sending greeting cards to them on special occasions CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY RESEARCH DESIGN We will follow a comparative research design to find out whether the university and enterprises have some mutual interests to cooperate with each other and what each side want to receive from the other This type of research design is chosen and appropriate in this dissertation because the university has not undertaken any studies about this topic and we can undertake a survey of only a small number of enterprises In order to achieve the research objectives, this study will use both quantitative method and qualitative methods The qualitative method is use mainly in analyzing prevailing policies and proposing recommendations The quantitative method is use mainly in analyzing surveyed data POPULATION AND SAMPLING DESIGN There are two types of subject The first subject includes enterprises This group will be surveyed to find out whether they are willing to participate in training activities in ULSA, in which activities they can participate, what they want to receive in return, and etc The second group includes graduated students They will be surveyed to collect information about their job, their lacked skills and knowledge after graduation, their recommendations for improving training quality of ULSA, and etc These two populations contain a huge number of respondents However, to survey these numbers of respondents will need a long time and many other resources For the scope and design of this study, we will survey only 100 CEOs and 100 graduated students The sample of the study is shown in table below Population and sample of the study Subject Sample CEOs of enterprises 100 Graduated students 100 RESEARCH INSTRUMENT The questionnaires for CEOs will have three parts The first part including questions for collecting general information about the CEOs and its enterprise, such as name, address, operational field of the enterprise, age, sex, and educational degree of the CEOs The second part will be the most important one in the questionnaire It will focus on collecting information about whether enterprises are willingness to cooperate with ULSA in training activities, which areas they can and want to cooperate, and which benefits they hope to receive from the cooperation The third part is designed for collecting suggestions to improve the relationship between ULSA and enterprises The questionnaires for graduated students will also have three parts The first part including questions for collecting general information about the student and its current job (name, address, operational field of his/her enterprise, age, sex, the studying field, current position of the student) The second part will focus on collecting information about the student’s job history, difficulties they faced in finding jobs, reasons for these difficulties, unsuitability (if any) between trained skills/ knowledge and work in reality, etc The third part includes questions for collecting suggestions/ proposals from graduated students to ULSA for improve its training quality through the partnership with enterprises DATA GATHERING PROCEDURE • After finishing all preparing activities (such as getting the final permission from SLSU and TNU for approving the proposal of research, approvals from supervisors about questionnaires), author of this study will send the questionnaire for CEOs and detailed instruction to the Association of enterprises of Hanoi Then, the Association will conduct the survey and send complete questionnaire sheets back to the author • Basing on the database of graduated students stored in ULSA, the author will choose randomly three classes, graduated in 2009, 2010, and 2011, respectively Then, each student in these classes will be contacted by phones for agreement to participate in the survey After that, the questionnaire for graduated students and detailed instruction will be sent by email to agreed students The students will send back complete questionnaire sheets back to the author DATA PROCESSING METHOD • Returned questionnaires will be checked and cleaned by the author • Raw data will be analyzed by three computer softwares, including Excel, SPSS, and Stata • Data will be analyzed descriptively only because the research design is comparative • Results are presented in tables and charts Each result will be presented in both frequency and percentage CHAPTER IV PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA JOB HISTORY OF GRADUATED STUDENTS Of all surveyed students, only students (about 5.5%) are currently unemployed and all of them studied accounting Reasons why only accounting students were unemployed may be that they graduated in the late of 2011 when the economic crisis started in the world and there were too many universities providing training programmes in accounting in Vietnam On the side of unemployed graduates, they gave several reasons for being unemployed Seven of eight students (87.5%) said that they had applied but were not employed because their trained knowledge and skills were not fit for jobs; three fourths said that enterprises (employers) not want to employ bachelors graduated from ULSA because the university has low reputation; the same number said that enterprises (employers) have demand to employ bachelors in their training field but they not want to work because of low salary In addition, students pointed out some other reasons, such as they were employed but then were fired because their trained knowledge and skills were not fit for jobs All other reasons were also related to inappropriate knowledge/ skills and low image In general, about two thirds of graduated students have current job fit with their training fields and about 8% have current jobs unrelated to their training fields Other students have current jobs close to their training fields This does not mean it is easy for graduated students to find jobs fit with their training fields and with satisfactory payments Nearly 40% of students got their first jobs in more than months since graduation and about 20% had changed their jobs Of those who had changed their job, about two thirds said that it were because previous jobs did not fit with training field so that they gave up in order to find another one that fit with training field and about one fourth said that they quit previous jobs because of low salaries For those students who had not changed jobs, it was not that they were satisfied with their current jobs Many students were afraid that they could not find new jobs if they quit their current ones EXPERIENCES OF ENTERPRISES WITH RELATION TO ULSA In term labour employment, only 9.4% of surveyed enterprises are currently employing bachelors graduated from ULSA Percentages of large enterprises and medium enterprises currently employ graduates of the university are quite the same, at about 11.5% while the percentage of small medium enterprises is only 6.38% On the side of enterprises, surveyed CEOs exposed some reasons for not employing bachelors graduated from ULSA The most important reason that enterprises did not employ bachelors graduated from the university, which was given by more than 50% of surveyed CEOs, was that their enterprises had no demand for labour in those three training fields provided by ULSA There are too many universities in Vietnam providing training programmes in fields very similar to those by ULSA and total training capacity exceeds demand of labour markets Three fourths of surveyed students said that enterprises not want to employ bachelors graduated from ULSA because the university has low reputation On the side of CEOs, 26.42% said that their enterprises had no information about ULSA so that they did not want to employ bachelors graduated from the university Certainly, enterprises will employ graduates from more reputable universities if they study in the 10 same training field The third reason given by surveyed CEOs relating to inappropriate knowledge and skills of students (low training quality) Of those enterprises currently not employing bachelors graduated from ULSA, some have had applicant from the university and could not employ them or employed but then fired them because their trained knowledge and skills were not fit for jobs WORKING WEAKNESSES OF STUDENTS More than 90% of CEOs said that graduated students lack practical knowledge and skills needed for their jobs The same percentage said that students have low ability in using foreign languages (English) for their jobs On the side of graduated students, the most weakness which nearly all students thought they had to face was their low ability in using foreign languages The other weakness that most (92.47%) students faced related to their lack of practical knowledge and skills Many surveyed CEOs pointed out three other weaknesses relating to working capacity of bachelors graduated from ULSA with percentages at about 70-80% These include the lack of supplemental knowledge and skills, low ability in using computer and softwares, and low ability in self-control, independent and creative working Although most CEOs thought that students faced these weaknesses, most students did not think so Only 32.19% of graduated students said that they have low ability in self-control, independent and creative working, 20.55% said that they lacked supplemental knowledge and skills, and less than 10% agreed that they had low ability in using computer and softwares POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR ULSA IN COOPERATION WITH ENTERPRISES Surveyed CEOs exposed many activities that their enterprises could be able to 11 cooperate with universities These activities lay at all three areas, namely training, services, and research In general, we can say that there many potential opportunities that universities can take advantages of the cooperation with enterprises Surveyed CEOs said that, if ULSA has appropriate cooperating mechanism/ policies, their enterprises will be cooperate with the university in many activities With respect to cooperation in training, enterprises are willing to participate in a lot of activities More than 90% of CEOs agreed to admit students to fulfill their long-time and short-time practical courses at their work or to share practical information and vocational guidance to students About 75-84% of surveyed CEOs said that they could give comments or participate in designing curricula, give lectures, supervise and give marks to students’ final theses, or sign contract with the university to provide short-time training courses in technology, management, etc to their staffs Two thirds of them said that they could place orders to employ ULSA’s graduated students Only about 20% of CEOs are willing to give machineries, facilities to the university or scholarships to its students In term services, there is only one activity that more than 50% of surveyed enterprises agree to cooperate with ULSA The activity is “the university provides consultants about technology and management to enterprises” Other activities, such as “the university introduces new technology to enterprises” or “enterprises sell their researching results to the university” were chosen by less than one fourth of CEOs For cooperation in research, 62.39% enterprises can sign contract with the university to undertake research projects for them while only 23.08% are willing to mutually participate in or contribute resources to fulfill research projects Probably, this is because enterprises have little experience in research and, with limited resources, they not want to participate in risky activities In addition, 53.85% of 12 CEOs said that they are willing to mutually participate in scientific-technological forums, clubs with the university and 47.86% can provide supports for researching activities of the university We can see that all activities that enterprises want to cooperate with ULSA are “traditional” They are frequently willing to cooperate with the university in activities that need few resources or are easy to The main reason is that they have little information about the university, especially its capacity As a result, it is easy to understand why they are careful with participating in cooperating activities with ULSA Another reason is probably that enterprises not have enough resources for their business, and thus they not want to participate in activities which can not provide any immediate benefits SOLUTIONS FOR STRENGTHENING THE COOPERATION BETWEEN ULSA AND ENTERPRISES 5.1 Ensure harmonious benefits for enterprises In this survey, 86.32% of CEOs said that, in order to encourage them to cooperate with ULSA, the university should buy their products, allow free advertisement of enterprises in its website or place panels at the university Certainly, ULSA can not buy products of all cooperating enterprises However, the university can allow many enterprises to advertise in its website Many enterprises, especially small ones, can not catch up with updated legal documents 82.91% of CEOs want ULSA to update and provide free of charge (mainly by Internet) legal documents relating to enterprise It is impossible for the university to update and provide all regulations related to enterprises However, ULSA can provide them update regulations in its training fields because the university also needs these regulations for its training programmes 13 In order to encourage enterprises to fulfill activities that help ULSA free of charge, the university needs to provide them some other activities free of charge 80.34% of surveyed CEOs agreed that their enterprises can admit ULSA’s students to fulfill their practical courses or they can share information about labour markets free of charge if the university provides free consultancies or remission of charge for some cooperating activities To solve the dilemma between “encouraging enterprises to cooperate” and “raising benefits”, ULSA should consider which services it can provide free of charge or how high remission rates are Another solution chosen by two thirds of CEOs is that the university contributes to or participates in sporting, cultural activities in enterprises Visiting and playing together sometimes are more effective than payment With about twenty thousands students, it is very easy for ULSA to implement this solution This will also provide opportunities for students to accustom to the working environment in the reality Two third of CEOs want to receive adequate payments for their personal participation in giving lectures at the university Although most CEOs give lectures to students not for money, it is needed to cover all of their costs, including transportation and preparation Thus, ULSA should double its current compensation for invited lecturers (CEOs) With respect to contribution by ULSA for activities of students at work, only 45.30% CEOs said that the university needs to make payments and 6.84% said that the university needs to contribute facility Opinions of graduated students about solutions for ensuring harmonious benefits for enterprises in the cooperation with ULSA are very similar to those given by CEOs About 90% of graduated students thought that ULSA should give adequate payments when CEOs give lectures at the university; 87.07% said that the university 14 should provide free consultancies or remission of charge for some cooperating activities; 72.79% of them thought that the university should contribute to or participate in sporting, cultural activities in enterprises; 54.42% said that ULSA should update and provide free of charge legal documents relating to enterprise Students also believe that the contribution by ULSA for activities of its students at work is not important (with percentages at less than 15%) 5.2 Acknowledge the contribution by enterprises If ULSA can not contribute much monetary payments to enterprises, it can promote its cooperation with them by expressing its acknowledgement of their contribution On overall, 88% of CEOs want the university to make a list of cooperating enterprises and upload it to the website; 79% CEOs want the university to write articles about important cooperating events in the website These activities will help to popularize their images to the public When people offering suggestions, they want their suggestions to be considered This consideration should be implemented in the reality Thus, about 60% of CEOs said that the university should send back to them those documents that they had commented In some special occasions, such as birthday of CEOs, the university should send flowers/ cards to them This shows that the university remembers their distribution and wants them to cooperate more with it In this sample, about 82% of CEOs want the university implement this activity Students also share very similar opinions Nearly all of surveyed graduates think that ULSA should realize these four activities 5.3 Supplementary solutions Many CEOs had very little information about ULSA About 80% of CEOs 15 said that ULSA should send its information to them Moreover, in order to create and maintain partnership with enterprises, ULSA should sign cooperating commitments/ agreements with enterprises About two thirds of CEOs suggested that they want their cooperation with the university to be “formal and long-term” by signing principled agreements with each other On the side of students, more than 90% of them agreed that the university should implement these two supplementary solutions CHAPTER V SUMMARY, FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS SUMMARY OF FINDINGS • Low quality of current training programmes According to surveyed CEOs of enterprises and graduated students, the working competence of ULSA’s graduates is quite low The reason is that there is a gap between what students have been trained in the university and what they need for their work in the reality The training gap appears in some different aspects They include the lack of practical knowledge and skills, the lack of supplemental knowledge and skills, low ability in using computer and softwares, low ability in using foreign languages, which are needed for fulfilling their jobs, and low ability in self-control, independent, and creative working As a result, it is difficult for students to find jobs with adequate salaries • Little experience in cooperation with enterprises Until now, ULSA does not have formal relationship with any enterprises Thus, there have been very few activities of the university which have the participation of enterprises, as well as activities that the university undertook for 16 enterprises Previous and current training programmes were designed chiefly by the university itself • Potential opportunities for strengthening partnership with enterprises It is found that enterprises can be able and willing to cooperate with ULSA in many activities although most of them have very little experience in the cooperation with universities These activities can be classified into three groups, namely, training, services and research With respect to cooperation in training, (CEOs of) most enterprises can participate in the training process, such as designing curricula or giving lectures, but few of them want to contribute (free of charge) scholarships or facilities to the university Moreover, most of enterprises agree to sign contract with ULSA to provide short-time training courses to their staffs In term of services, about two third of enterprises want to sign contract with the university to provide consultants about technology and management However, less than 50% of enterprises want to receive other services provided by the university, such as evaluating their production or introducing, mediating new technology to their enterprises This is probably because they not believe in the quality of these services On the other hand, very few enterprises can sell their researching results to the university because they not devote much of their resource for R&D that universities can apply For cooperation in research, more than half of enterprises agree to sign contract with the university to undertake research projects for them or mutually participate with the university in scientific-technological forums, clubs However, only about one fourth of enterprises want to participate in or contribute resources to fulfill research projects mutually with the university 17 • Proposed solutions by enterprises for strengthening their partnership with ULSA According to CEOs of enterprises, they will create and maintain their partnership with ULSA if the university offers appropriate policies These policies include those for ensuring harmonious benefits for enterprises in such a way that can create an “equal and mutually beneficial” cooperation, those acknowledging the cooperation/ distribution from enterprises, and some supplementary activities However, CEOs of most enterprises did not require much financial or physical distribution from the university • Policy of Government for promoting university-enterprise cooperation Government policies are the external environment that can promote or hinder the university-enterprise partnership Although the central Government of Vietnam realized the significance of university-enterprise relationship on the training quality, it has promulgated only “broad” Law, Directions, and Strategies to promote the university-enterprise relationship However, very few “specific” policies have been issued and implemented to promote the cooperation between universities and enterprises It can be said that, currently, there are not enough policies to create favourable conditions for promoting university-enterprise partnership in Vietnam CONCLUSION First, ULSA should design and implemented activities for raising its training quality These activities need to focus on improving training curricula as well as changing teaching methods Second, the university should devote more of its resources to create and strengthen the partnership with enterprises 18 Third, there are many potential opportunities for ULSA to create and strengthen its partnership with enterprises Its partnership with enterprises can be created in training, services and research Fourth, in order to realize potential opportunities, the university should implement a set of suitable policies/ solutions These policies need to ensure harmonious benefits for enterprises in such a way that can create an “equal and mutually beneficial” cooperation, acknowledge the cooperation/ distribution from enterprises Fifth, with respect to benefits gaining from the partnership with ULSA, most of benefits are non-financial items Six, two thirds of surveyed enterprises agreed to place orders to employ graduated students of ULSA if the university has the partnership with them Last, ULSA should cooperate with the Vietnam Network of Economic Universities to design policies for promoting university-enterprise cooperation in Vietnam Then, the Network will submit these proposed policies to MOET and other relevant authorities RECOMMENDATION 3.1 Improving training curricula and changing teaching methods With respect to training curricula, ULSA should add more practical subjects In order to choose most needed and appropriate practical subjects, ULSA should collect information about labour markets, both from comments of enterprises and from feedback of former students Training curricula of the university should contain some “soft” subjects as “special/ practical” topics These topics can be changed annually to catch up with changes in labour markets To keep training curricula flexible but stable, special topics should occupy less than 10% of all subjects 19 To collect feedbacks from graduated students, ULSA should set up a network or forum of former students in its website A similar forum can also set up for collecting information from enterprises In term of teaching methods, the university should apply the “credit” model in which students are regarded as the “center” of the training process In addition, in every subject, teaching methods also need to be changed from “transferring knowledge in one way from lectures to students” into “two-way discussion” Students will give more time for preparation and less time in their class Lecturers will play mainly the role as supervisors/ directors in discussion by students Moreover, the method of assessment should be diversified and “continual” Final mark of every subject should contain at less four components, namely, attendance, participation/ activeness, mid-term exam, and final exam Beside that, instead of written exams for all subjects, the university should apply other assessment methods, such as oral exams, assignments or presentation In order to improve the ability of students in using foreign languages (English) for their work the university should change the teaching way of this subject Each class should include less than 30 students Each class should be organized for students with the same “English” levels In addition, ULSA should buy more textbooks, newspapers written in English for students The university can implement some other solutions, such as organizing English clubs for students, teaching some subjects in English for students, or giving “rewarded” marks for theses or assignments written in English With respect to supplemental skills, such as ability to use computer/ softwares, ability in self-control, independent and creative working, ULSA should design some new “optional” subjects that students can choose, such as computer softwares for 20