Higher education institutions (HEIs) in Vietnam find that building effective partnership between higher education sector and industry in research and technology as well as narrowing skills gap are of a big challenge. Now, the UK Vietnam Higher Education Partnership Initiative (UK–VN HEP), under the strand on University Industry Link, will help offer opportunity for HEIs in Vietnam to learn UK best practice and models and develop capacity for Vietnamese higher education leaders in building effective strategic partnership with industry in research, technology, innovation and skills development.
From the UK Vietnam Higher Education Partnership Initiative (UK–VN HEP)
Launching the UK Vietnam Higher Education Partnership Initiative (UK–VN HEP) in Vietnam since June 2018, it is the effort of British Council Vietnam in responding the need and tackling challenges in higher education sector. The British Council, through the UK–VN HEP initiative this year, provides grant for ten partnership projects which cover four priory areas, leadership and governance, research and mobility, transnational education (TNE) and quality assurance, and university industry link.
In a total of ten international higher education partnership projects, HEP supports five projects in combined university industry strand with research or TNE. The five projects involve eight UK universities working in partnership with 12 Vietnamese higher education institutions which work together to share solutions to address issues of disconnection between higher education and industry.
Highlighting projects that can be named are:
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Project 1 University of Greenwich (UoG) |
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Project 2 University of Salford |
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Project 3 Bournemouth University |
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Project 4 University of Leeds |
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Project 5 Global Wales |
To effective strategic university and industry collaboration
The projects have brought a lot of positive impacts for both Vietnam and the UK. As an example, the partnership with Global Wales offers great opportunity to explore potential fit-to-purpose models that bolster industrial engagements for generating innovation for higher education and for the industry. Vietnamese higher education leaders and senior staff have gained invaluable insight knowledge as why is UI collaboration important and effective solutions addressing UI disconnection issues such as funding and incentivisation, employability for graduates within industry, preparing academics for engaging with industry, approach in applied research that generate beneficial results for companies.
‘This year, the University of Science and Technology, Danang University is very happy to participate in the partnership project with Global Wales which is part of the UK Vietnam Higher Education Partnership (HEP) initiated by the British Council. I greatly appreciated the HEP initiative because HEP addresses major areas that universities in Vietnam are very interested. The strand related to developing collaboration between universities and business has truly met the needs of Vietnamese universities, especially in the context that many Vietnamese universities, including our university are in the process of innovate their programmes.’ Dr Le Thi Kim Oanh, Vice Rector, University of Science and Technology, Danang University.
UK and Vietnamese higher education institutions in the partnership projects have formed Vietnam UK higher education network and are expected to share their learnings and outcome of their own projects to wider institutions in the higher education system in Vietnam.
Through the HEP, UK also have greater access to the higher education market in Vietnam, being valued as world leader and preferred HE and research partner which ultimately aim to boost research, innovation and academic opportunities for the UK university sector and enable them to build competitive and sustainable long-term partnership with Vietnam.
‘Why Global Wales is reaching out in this way. I think there is a deep understanding that in the old economy what is important is competitive advantage but under the new economy what is important is collaborative advantage.' Prof Iwan Davies, Chair of Global Wales.
Watch our Videos on Leadership and University Industry link to know more about HEP activities.