Enhancing Graduate employability: The perspectives of Vietnamese university students and graduates

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2013 in the subject Pedagogy - Adult Education, grade: Pass, La Trobe University Melbourne, course: Doctor of Education, language: English, abstract: Graduate employability has become a highly topical and contested issue in Vietnam. Many employers report that university students are not suitably prepared for work, and universities are often criticised for their poor commitment to developing student employability assets. Much of the criticism identifies the causes to be an outdated higher education curriculum coupled with too much reliance on traditional teaching approaches, and a general poor capacity of universities to support students to develop the skills that the market requires. This study challenges this ¿common sense¿ (Gramsci, 1999) criticism that places the responsibility of student transition to the employment market squarely on the shoulders of universities. By analysing qualitative data, that includes the voices of students, recent graduates and employers, on issues related to employability, this study locates the criticisms of the Vietnamese higher education system within the wider social and cultural contexts related to the difficulties of student transition. It adopts Hillage and Pollard¿s (1998) employability conceptual framework where the interplay between student employability assets, the ways students translate or deploy their university achievements in employment (Knight & York, 2004) and the internal and external contexts under which students seek work (Beckett & Mulcahy, 2006), interact to contribute a complex picture of employability.

The findings of this study reveal that enhancing graduate employability in Vietnam involves many factors that are often underplayed in the general literature. In the Vietnamese context, both the education system and the economy remain relatively underdeveloped; students are schooled to be passive learners and workers; and corrupt employment practices remain rife. Moreover, Confucian cultural features of face saving, hierarchical order in decision making, and the role of rumour and hearsay in a collectivist culture each play an important part in the different ways university graduates negotiate their transition to employment. The study suggests that universities, students, employers and other related stakeholders (including students¿ families, government and educational policy makers) all need to acknowledge the rapid changes taking place in Vietnamese society. [...]