Strengthening the partnership of university and enterprises in ha noi, vietnam the case of university of labour and social affairs (ULSA)

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 qualit

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

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

1 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 enterprise partnership

university-• 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

University-enterprise relationship can be thought as a special kind of 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

provider-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

Training activities

- Improving curriculum

- CEOs of enterprises give lectures

- Participating in colloquium defense

- 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

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

1 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

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

CEOs of enterprises 100 Graduated students 100

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

• 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

• 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

Of all surveyed students, only 8 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) do 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 do 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 3

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

2 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 do 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

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

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

ENTERPRISES

Surveyed CEOs exposed many activities that their enterprises could be able to

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 do not want to participate in risky activities In addition, 53.85% of