Impacts of school resources on training outcome a case study on three southern universities supervised by MOIT

The quantitative results of Bootstrap replications method 1000 times with random effect model indicated the importance of qualified teachers and the financial investment on infrastructur

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS ERASMUS UNVERSITY ROTTERDAM

HO CHI MINH CITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES

VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS

VIETNAM – THE NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

IMPACTS OF SCHOOL RESOURCES ON

TRAINING OUTCOME: A CASE STUDY ON

THREE SOUTHERN UNIVERSITIES

SUPERVISED BY MOIT

BY

VO XUAN DUC

MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

HO CHI MINH CITY, July 2016

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES

HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE

VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS

VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS

PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

IMPACTS OF SCHOOL RESOURCES ON TRAINING OUTCOME: A CASE STUDY ON

THREE SOUTHERN UNIVERSITIES

SUPERVISED BY MOIT

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

By

VO XUAN DUC

Academic Supervisor:

Dr NGUYEN HUU DUNG

HO CHI MINH CITY, July 2016

CERTIFICATION

“I certify this thesis has not been submitted for other degrees

I certify my best ability and knowledge, any guidance received in preparing

of this thesis have been acknowledged”

Signature

Vo Xuan Duc

Date: December 10th, 2016

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

A completed study would not be done without the assistance Therefore, the author who conducted this dissertation gratefully gives acknowledgement to all the support and motivation during the time of doing research as a requirement of completing my dissertation of Development Economics

First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and gratefulness to all reputable instructors in Vietnam Netherlands Program, who helped me to achieve the knowledge through interesting lessons, useful assignment, utility seminars and salutary information

I would like to express my deep and sincere thanks to my advisor Dr Nguyen Huu Dung for the continuous support of my study and research, for his patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge I appreciate all his contributions of time, ideas, and funding to make my dissertation experience productive and stimulating

I am grateful to all the staffs of Vietnam Netherlands Program’s office, have helped me to access books, references and necessary documents during the learning process

My deeply thanks to all my friends during time I study in this great programme Their kindly help, care, motivation gave me strength and lift me

up all the trouble for my study

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the impact of school resources on training outcome, based on the relationship between the annual number of graduates and related factors We examine that impact for understanding about the determinants could lead to the increase or decrease on the annual number of good graduates beyond school decisions about strategic adjustment of financial nvestments The data resource is constructed in association with the management board of the three universities supervised

by MOIT; cited sources from MOET and goverment reports in duration

2004-2014 are used to analyze the impact of school resources on training outcome The quantitative results of Bootstrap replications method (1000 times) with random effect model indicated the importance of qualified teachers and the financial investment on infrastructure - upgrading the learning environment to the quality of training outcome

Key Words: training outcome, school resources, higher education, graduates, accreditation, education production function

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction 1

1.2 Scope of the study 5

1.3 Organization of the thesis 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Theoretical review 7

2.1.1 Higher education 7

2.1.2 The education production function 9

2.1.3 University resources 11

2.1.4 Number of graduates 16

2.2 Empirical review 17

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Concept 23

3.2 Data resources 24

3.3 Production function 26

3.3.1 Fixed effects model (FEM) 30

3.3.2 Random effects model (REM) 31

3.3.3 Bootstrapping 31

3.4 Hausman test for choosing FEM or REM 35

CHAPTER 4: SCHOOL RESOURCES ON TRAINING OUTCOME 4.1 Overview about the higher education in Vietnam 37

4.2 Descriptive statistic 39

4.3 Regression results 45

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 5.1 Main findings 48

5.2 Limitations of the study 49

5.3 Implications 50

5.4 Suggestions for further studies 52

APPENDIX 53

REFERENCES 57

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction

"Education and training have the mission to improve knowledge, develop human resources, cultivate country talent, contribute to national development, culture construction and the people of Vietnam" – Documents of the 11th Congress (The Communist Party of Vietnam, 2011) Along with the responsibility and task that the Party and the people entrusted, the education system Vietnam has gained remarkable achievements in the renewal and development of education in the country The number of educational institutions, as well as highly qualified human resources increased rapidly over the years Together with the increase in the number

of eligible colleges upgraded to a university The diversity and competition in education has received much attention, such as the development of the international standard systems, international universities or international cooperation are constantly contributing to improve the educational background of the country, especially in the higher education

“Higher Education is a prerequisite for the production of highly competent experts, which in turn, contributes to the development of organizations and the economy at large Higher Education therefore is expected to play an important and increasing role in the development of Human Capital of a nation” (Adedeji, 2013)

In Vietnam, one of the most concerned subjects for years recently is the development of higher education A series of programs, schemes and development innovation education was implemented, but the quality of education is still a large question mark Following to the Proposal of Higher Education Reforming by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), up to 2020, Vietnam will build 900 universities and colleges with a total investment cost of 20 billion dollars and serve the total need of 4.5 million students And, according to The Education

Development Strategy 2011-2020 (Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, 2012), part 1 section 4 – Target of Development: “By 2020, the percentage of workers through job training and college at about 70%; the percentage of students in a thousand people around 350-400” These seemed that the target of higher education development in Vietnam directed towards the education universalization

When the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) was established in 1991; currently has more than 160 members (including specialized program inspectors) Vietnam is now also a member of this association And maybe, the problem of training quality could be solved or guaranteed through national systems of quality assessment, such as Centers of Education Accreditation of Vietnam National University HCMC (VNU-HN), Da Nang University, Association of Universities and Colleges Vietnam… In which a university will be conducted to an accreditation process – the result is a dual decision (pass or fail) This is a comprehensive evaluation process, via the ten criteria stipulated by the MOET However, to be qualified as well as to have an adequate preparation, universities need to go through the process at least a few years and along with other financial issues In Vietnam, it seemed to be difficult to make sure that qualified universities have guarantee in training quality – perhaps it could

be brought out the efficiency in the enrollment or the raising in the university reputation…

According to the Decree 25/2006/QD-BGD&DT and BGD&DT - prescribed the Regulation of university and college training, student meets all the graduation standards will be conducted to be graduate (usually, it must

43/2007/QD-go through the council of graduation – by the principal as chairman or vice-principal authorized by the rector) Graduate student will be awarded the diploma; this is certified for the process of learning, acquiring and accumulating knowledge Diploma, therefore, also shows the capacity of the grantees There are three common levels of grading: Excellence, Good and Average Graduate students with good final

grade generally have better advantages in the recruitment Actually, there is almost unprecedented in the annual report on the output quality of each university - the number of graduate students ranked well

To improve the quality of higher education, namely the quality of training is always a major matter in recent years Many researches on the higher-education development in the field of Master in Business Administration primarily concentrated in investigating student contentment with school services and training programs However, they based on survey data, which is apparently difficult to rely

on, to access student’s satisfaction toward available resources; and one more important thing that their outcomes stem from the perspective of practitioners –

“service beneficiaries” Challenges maybe come from inadequacies in education laws and policies, furthermore, universities themselves are now facing many difficulties once they still rely heavily on the state budget In other words, difficulty

in developing and improving the training quality largely may come from the intrinsic capacity – school resources Consequently, how about the point of inner view – “service providers”? Why universities not to justify the effectiveness of training themselves with their own resources – constitutive factors and development activities Thus, we assumed the number of quality graduates as productive goods that university (as a firm) can train (or produce) over years

Furthermore, the impacts of school resources on training quality may not be

an array of new research From the 60s of the last century, there have been many studies such as Hanushek (1986, 1997, 2006), Woessmann (2003; 2005a; 2005b), Heyneman and Loxley (1982, 1983), Nascimento (2008); Harris and Goldrick-Rab (2011); Sullivan (2013)… discussed about this issue and it’s thematic The researchers from multiple aspects and different methods have brought many approaches and controversial results A fact that, the role of school resources allocation as well as the impact of these factors on student achievement differ for each of the range of research, countries or region, even each level of educational

institutions In Vietnam, it seemed to be hard to find any possible research can meet the above mentioned dynamics, almost searchable key words led to studies from the perspective of the beneficiaries and encapsulated in small scopes Via consulting development strategy plans or synthesis financial plans at some universities, they are almost identical in each period and even over the years We could figure out how they documented or what specific scientific subjects were their basements - those make us wonder, as well as motivate for this research

Stemming from the above practical requirements, I proceed the study:

“Impacts of school resources on training outcome: a case study on three southern universities supervised by MOIT”

This study aims to examine the influence of inner elements such as the number of highly qualified teachers, investments on learning facilities, researches

or funds for extracurricular activities… of a university on the quality of training Particularly, to understand and find the answers for following question:

- How does each of resources affect the annual number of qualified graduates?

From there, development policies could be set in the line with the current capacity of the university, as well as the order of priority for each resource

1.2 Scope of the study

The study attempts to examine the inner factors that universities can easily directly allocate and adjust, mainly related to financial affections The database collected from three universities supervised by the MOIT (industrial university of HCMC, HCMC University of food industry and Nguyen Tat Thanh University) within the 2004-2014 periods The three universities have operated in different financial-autonomy conditions Especially, we chose technical students with assumption that these students need training resources to cooperate with learning motivations more than those of economics students Thus, the panel-database will

include the number of technical graduates achieving good grade or higher (formal training of college and university), the financial data for resource variables ranging from 2004 to 2014

1.3 Organization of the thesis

This thesis contains five chapters, order and names of the chapters are as follows:

- Chapter 1: Introduction

- Chapter 2: Literature review

- Chapter 3: Methodology

- Chapter 4: Empirical results

- Chapter 5: Conclusion and policy implications

Chapter 1 introduces the motivation of studying the effect of school resources

on training quality This chapter also contains the vision as well as scalability for future researches of this study Chapter 2 stores the conceptual study of this research, reviews the theoretical - empirical theories about the effect of school resources and the relationship between these determinants and training quality Chapter 3 presents the way to construct this research, testing, hypothesis and model using to achieve the appropriate estimation Chapter 4 analyzes the results after running regressions, and interprets the relationship among variables and main findings The last chapter contains the conclusion of this study and the implications toward main findings, it also mentions limitations of research and suggestions for further thematic

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Theoretical review

2.1.1 Higher education

Higher education includes all educational forms take place at the base of tertiary study; courses usually end with the award of academic or certification The higher education establishments include not only universities but also universities and professional schools, pedagogical schools, colleges, universities, public and private two-year and technical institutes A basic entry requirement for most institutions of higher education is to complete secondary education, and regular admission age is about 18 years old (Rhodes, 2009)

Higher education includes teaching, research, practice (as in the medical and dental field), and serving society's institutions of higher education Forms of higher education include: general education (general education), typically include significant elements and abstract theory with application aspects; focused education sectors liberal (liberal arts education), including the humanities, science and art; nature education training (vocational education), combines teaching the theory and practical skills; professional education (professional education), as in the fields of architecture, business, law, medicine, etc

In many developing countries, up to 50 percent of the population enrolled in institutions of higher education Higher education is therefore very important for the national economy, as an economic sector and where the education and training of human resources for the rest of the economy People who go to college (or university) usually earn higher wages and are less likely to be unemployed than those with less education (Simkovic, 2013)

In 1975, after the war, all the educational institutions of private universities used to operate in South Vietnam under the Republican regime are dissolved; the public higher education is dissolved, divided or rearrange into the Soviet modeled dispersion; autonomy in universities had been abolished The system of Vietnam education including higher education is completely under the control of the State and the Communist Party of Vietnam Article 36 of the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1992) stipulates that "the state government manages the national education system on the objectives, programs, content, education plans, and teacher standards, regulations on examinations and qualifications system" Vietnam higher education after 1975 complied with the subsidy model as in other socialist countries Every year, the state government allocated enrollment quotas for higher education institutions, this calculation based on the needs of the state agencies and localities Follow to this criterion, the budget allocated to ministries, and the money distributed to the educational institutions under these ministries’ management Graduates would be assigned by the state

The situation changed since 1987, the payroll regime inactivated and graduates became jobless because they were not longer assigned to the state agencies This has resulted in the higher education establishments at risk of disintegration In this summer (1987), the Ministry of Higher education and Vocational schools convened rectors and Party secretaries to attend a conference in Nha Trang The conference discussed the reform plan includes four premises of training: Training not only for government agencies but also for the economics

sector; training on the forecasts of demand on labor requirements in the future; training is to serve the learning needs of the people, without the responsibility of job assignment, students find jobs on their own; diversity in training, including the type

of non-formal education, operating not only by the state budget but also by charge fees forms

Vietnam Higher Education undergone major changes in the early 1990s with the establishment of the type of higher education institution known as "university", nearly identity with the model of “University institute”; a "university" was established on the basis of merging some monophyletic and single field universities into one institution On June 18, 2012, the Vietnam Congress promulgated for the first time the law of Higher Education, regulated "regulations on the organization, duties and rights of the higher education establishments, training activities, scientific and technological activities, international cooperation activities, quality assurance and accreditation of higher education, faculty, student financial assets of higher education establishments and state management on higher education."

2.1.2 The education production function

Analysis of the role of school resources in determining achievement begins with the “Coleman Report” (Coleman et al, 1966), the United States Government launched a report on educational inequality which shown that family background and other similar effects are the essential determinants of student achievement The researchers thereafter began to lay the foundation for the concept of Educational Production Function (EPF), has created much controversy revolves turned to the impact of school resources on student achievements EPF is the expression of the mutual interaction created by the economists, in which the school is seen as the place where the interaction takes place between the educational elements (teachers, book, facilities etc and students themselves) to produce an output, student achievements Hence, an educational production function could be defined as followed (Bowles, 1970):

𝐴 = 𝑓(𝑋1, … , 𝑋𝑚, 𝑋𝑛, … , 𝑋𝑣, 𝑋𝑤, … , 𝑋𝑧)

Where

A = school output measurement

X 1 , …, X m = school environment variables

X n , …, X v = variables of educational environments outside the school

X w , …, X z = other variables of student’s ability

The author also reviewed that results on the relationship between school inputs and outputs based on the EPF are difficult to summarize, because of the variety of measurements used and the diversity of finding

The major criticism on this EPF concept comes from educationalists that it fails to account for educational processes - in which how educational factors (or school resources) have helped educate students to achieve the desired goals Thus, researchers attempted to reduce the gap, by focusing on intermediate factors such

as class-size (Woesmann, 2005a), student background and teacher characteristics (Sanders, 2000), the use of information and communication technologies (Youssef

& Dahmani, 2008) However, on economic aspects, the main finding of an EPF is

to determine the relevance of each resource, estimate the efficacy of using, and which resources examined to extend

Furthermore, estimated models on above listed studies including Bowles (1970) focused on achievement test scores and explanatory variables could make impacts on those dependent variables The purpose of this paper is not primarily to present empirical estimates of education production functions but rather to explore

in another way of school output, the number of qualified graduates Specifically, using EPF idea to apply the concept of qualified graduates as final goods of the producing processes and university as a firm to allocate its input of resources, increasing (maximizing) the number of qualified graduates within given inputs of

schooling resources involved in this type of estimation, which is mathematically defined as followed:

𝐴 = 𝑈(𝑋)

Where

A = school output measurement as number of qualified graduates

X = variables involved to determine the output of qualified graduates

2.1.3 University resources

As we mentioned above, this study considered the university as a firm Vargo and Lusch (2004) stated that the provider's resources (resource operand) are efficiently generated resources (represented by the knowledge, skills) Resources from provider can be invisible - dynamism and static - tangible resources Hence, university resources also include the intangible resources and tangible resources, intangible resources of the university including the reputation, governance capacity etc.; tangible resources of the university are the responsive infrastructure and financial capacity for scientific research

a) Highly qualified teachers:

Highly qualified teachers, or the capacity of its human resources - these instructors which diplomas qualified from Master to other higher levels of the academic degree, will be the core force of the human resources to increase the prestige of the university and improve the quality of training

Highly qualified teachers are the most important factor for the quality of training because they act as a guide, to lead learners to access knowledge, knowledge of political theory on the purpose of the program They not only to master a lesson content that you convey that to grasp the knowledge of the curriculum but also have such a link, systematization of knowledge necessary to help learners easy to grasp the main content of the lessons and courses Teachers

with professional standards of knowledge have the ability to create the confidence

in the process of transmission, to avoid the dependence on lesson plans, actively leading the learner access to knowledge according to their purpose In addition to self-equipping professional knowledge, highly qualified teachers may have more practical experience and practical knowledge Those help teachers enliven lectures, link between contents and practical lectures through illustration and unreserved practical examples; from which learners can be receptive, easy to remember and associate the lesson content with the reality rather than self-exploration

b) Learning facilities:

The term of learning facilities combines educational equipment, materials, all that daily changes of amenities involves ensuring continuity and convenience for learners, the procurement of equipment - supplies - practice materials These are important factors that constitute the learning environment for students; system with good learning facilities is a system that able to fully meet with the needs of students, create excitement and passion for learning, influence attitudes and feelings of students in the quality of services, as well as ensuring the educational environment

In other hand, good - flexible facilities design and effective facilities maintenance are integral to the success of higher education outcomes

Standing in terms of student health, comfort and enjoyment, it may confirm the importance of the amenities of learning environment Schneider (2002) has emphasized impacts of learning facilities which are indoor air quality, ventilation, and thermal comfort on the academic outcome Since most of the spending time on study and research of the students is at the university (lecture hall, research laboratory…); hence, a learning environment with fully equipped likely to lead to the learning interest, the increasing in the attendance frequency as well as the quality

of learning Besides, the use of materials and accessories for the practice, if reused repeatedly, obsolete or not updated may cause the boredom, decreased performance

in study and academic research Presently, the devices equipped with ventilation air

(air-conditioning classrooms for those schools with higher financial investments; or just in-use of high-quality training system and international joint training), lighting equipment, furniture - learning tools as well as modern projectors have become an issue of top concern universities - to increase the ability to acquire and effectively

in teaching and learning; as well as enhance ability to attract students and enrollment

c) Research:

As we know that, scientific research has particularly important role in higher education Together with the training process nowadays in Vietnam, scientific research is seen as one of the important factors to improve the quality of education, create human resources to meet the increasing needs of the society Research has played a special importance role in higher education because it not only contribute

to improve the quality of education but also create new knowledge, new product in service of the humanity development The 2nd Conference Resolution (Central Committee of Communist Party of Vietnam session VII, 2013) also stated: "The University must be the center of scientific research, technology transfer and application of technology in production and life "

Scientific research is not only important to higher education instructor, but also academic stepping stones needed for students Since the Circular 19/2012/TT-BGD&DT - promulgated regulations on scientific research activities of students in institutions of higher education, has partly indicated the recognition of scientific research necessary for the students, as well as to arouse their interest in research affairs and the application of theory into practice Many of these have been upgraded

to scientific research topics, thereby becoming the academic-playing-field as well

as improving confidence in learning Research activities also contribute to coherence between students and teachers via the implementation of research topics, reduce the gap and create the friendliness as well as expanding the capacity to explore and cultivate knowledge

d) Extracurricular activities:

Extracurricular activities, those are developed in the United States in the 19th century Initially, it was just an additional learning and activities plan during the year and which plan has some real benefits or the vocational training was included

in the official program of the university Harvard and Yale known as first places with orthodox extracurricular activities, which are different debate clubs and Greek systems such as fraternities and sororities Also, the US was known as the first place where sport clubs were formed

Extracurricular activities are activities outside the formal curriculum Extracurricular activities related to all cultural activities, sports, entertainment, and social activities outside class hours They have many positive effects on student’s performance, such as behavior, better grades, social experience and other positive aspects (Massoni, 2011) Extracurricular activities bring many health benefits; help students be more active both physically and mentally They also bring benefits in helping students to develop skills Moreover, communication skills, behavior and resolve the situation of student can be significantly improved through these activities “Participating in extracurricular activities appears to be one of the few interventions that benefit low-status, disadvantaged students—those less well served by traditional educational programs—as much as or more than their more advantaged peers” — Everson and Millsap (2005) Thus, Extracurricular activities seems to be a determinant can help to reduce the gap of student expenditures even

so an effective channel to raise the quality of learning

e) Library:

University library is a system or a department established by the school, managed and funded for activities to meet the demand for information, references and subjects on student, faculty and staff of the school (Reitz, 2005) The library, separately, was established with the mission attached to knowledge Libraries

always accompany with the people in the evolution of awareness, expand the vision, development of science, conservation and promotion of culture For today's learning society, the importance of the library has never diminished; and with the mighty rise

of information and communication technology, the library has yet to lose its humanistic values, there may be reasonable changes to adapt the current role Library is the bridge between information and users, it is an essential element and important, as a measure to assess the role, functions, duties, training effect of the university It is the motivation to contribute to the education renovation and the training of human resource; contribute to the innovation in teaching - learning methods, self-study environment and research, stimulating the initiative of learners

The collation of Information Management Associates to the United Kingdom library (2002) identified the positive impact of libraries in teaching and learning This study shows that libraries can be useful to constitute the academic environment; provide learning experiences; encourage and assist studies; support skills development and research; assist to access a wider groundwork of information; create conditions for equal development of training programs; enhancing the independence of learning; and offer guidance Moreover, the recent research by Williams and Wavell (2001a) has emphasized the role of libraries in promoting efforts of learning, instructing specific skills, fostering and encouraging team-works in studying

2.1.4 Number of graduates:

As stated on the concept section, the thesis focuses on the quality assessment perspective of "the output" If we consider university as a firm, then its final goods will be the number of productive graduates over years, or its effectiveness of training To be more specific, the term of “student achievement” can be understood

as follow:

Student achievement is the synthesis of thematic knowledge, understanding, and skills at a time - is quantified by standard test scores (National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, USA) In other words, the performance of a student will be qualified through test scores standardized by the teaching staff or the educational system That could be the end-tests subjects, evaluation tests and other tests depending on the regulations on the student’s outcome of each proposed university - of course, these systems have to rely on the general regulations of the Ministry managing educational issues In Vietnam, according to the Charter of university – college and the Educational law, students have finished the completion

of all the courses are eligible to be contestants of the graduation examination or the thesis defense; or have sufficient number of credits accumulated under the rules and meet the standard output of educational institutions will be granted a diploma Hence, this thesis assumes that student achievements as the final average grade shown on the diploma - after finished all courses and other necessary conditions, scores will be aggregated by the average method There are three common levels of grading: Excellence, Good and Average

2.2 Empirical review:

To understand effects of school resources on educational achievement, this

were inspired by research on the industrial production functions; the main idea is to

produce an output - inputs such as labor and capital are transformed by technology into products and services – which could be recognized as school resources and training outcome (number of good graduates) Hundreds of systematic empirical studies have been reported on effects of school resources on student achievement; which quite clearly showed that school resources have little or no effect on student

achievement Reviews of Hanushek (1986, 1997, and 2006) affirm that school

resources are not associated with student achievements These series based on his synthesis method, vote counting, summarizing the result of previous studies in US within the same technique of EPF estimation: (i) Hanushek (1986) examined the

total result of school and teacher characteristics that make impacts on the graduation rate; (ii) his review in 1997 concentrated on real classroom resources, financial aggregates of resources and other to examined the influence on student performance (measured mostly by the standardized test – test score performance measure and the other measured dropout behavior, continuation rates…); the 2006 review article focused on teacher quality as well as its characteristics such as teacher certification, salary, teacher scores on achievement tests of students… to investigate teacher’s affection on student performance in specific courses Hanushek with his series concluded that the school resources do not make improvements in educational outcomes but student performance are primarily affected by institutional factors and

emphasized educational policies Woessmann (2001) within his cross-country

research confirms the main impact came from educational institutions, rather than from the resources level His estimation based on data of 266,545 secondary-school students from 39 countries (the TIMSS - Third International Mathematics and Science Study) reveals that international differences in student performance (measured by mathematics and science score) are not caused by differences in schooling resources - equipment, facilities, teacher’s qualification, class size, student-teacher ratio…; but are essentially due to differences in educational institutions - centralized examinations, control mechanisms, school autonomy in personnel and process decisions

Back to the 80s, Heyneman and Loxley (1982, 1983) has proven that in income countries, schooling variables overbalance family characteristics in affecting learning outcome Until the 90s, together with developments in new approaching methods and data access (meta-analyses), has created studies argued the sufficient significance of school resources in affecting student performance –

low-“an acknowledgment that the allocation of internal resources has significant influence” (Nascimento, 2008) In a variety of independent studies with meta-analyses, could be listed as: (i) Hedges, Greenwald and Laine (1996) was

constructed with the same idea of vote counting methodology, though with a larger range of database (four ways of books and articles identified, each of electronic databases utilized to identify abstracts of potential interest) and two meta-analytic methods which are combined significance testing and effect magnitude estimation that led to a conclusion “a broad range of school inputs are positively related to student outcomes, and that the magnitude of the effects are sufficiently large to suggest that moderate increases in spending may be associated with significant increases in achievement”; (ii) Vergestegen and King (1998) reviewed and analyzed the research conducted between 1960s - 1990s to determine if inputs into schooling impact student outcomes – student achievements and they concluded that “A large and growing body of research that has taken advantage of improvements in technology, better databases and advancements in methodologies and measurements, provides further evidence that school inputs can and do make a difference in education and are positively associated with both enhanced student achievement and labor market earnings” Hedges and Olkin (1980) pointed out the sample of estimates is biased towards Erik’s conclusion which led to inconsistencies

in his studies and moreover the method of Eric’s vote counting is known to be a rather insensitive procedure for summarizing results Hanushek still stressed the importance of institutional factors (pure resource policies) and barely changed his perspective since 1986, despite of his recognition that “altered sets of incentives could dramatically improve the use of resources” (Hanushek, 2006)

Those above mentioned empirical studies focused on the public-school, students in high schools… Researchers designed metric-model surrounding characteristics of factors and specific courses (grades or standards of qualification

of a student’s achievement); and to the higher educational forms or to the effects of school resources in higher education, would the problem stay the same? Unlikely other educational institutions under higher-education, resources used by university/college have much more contributed to the social; “teaching and research

at colleges and universities contribute significantly to the nation’s economic activity, both directly and through their impact on future growth; federal and state governments support teaching and research with billions of taxpayers’ dollars; and individuals, communities, and the nation gain from the learning and innovation that occur in higher education” (according to “Improving measurement of productivity

in higher education” by Massy, William F., Teresa A Sullivan, and Christopher Mackie, 2013) Using data collected from the National Center for Education Statistics, the report developed an EPF to estimate how college resources affect student hour – “one hour of lectures, of lab work, or recitation room work, for a single pupil” (Barrow, 1990:70) The basic idea of creating measurements on this report for the impact factors of higher education is to ensure “(a) changes in the quantity of output, expressed to capture both degrees (or other markers of successful completion) and passed credit hours to (b) changes in the quantity of inputs, expressed to capture both labor and non-labor factors of production” (p.3) Sullivan’s report defined inputs of a higher education institution as (1) labor (e.g., professors, administrators); (2) physical and financial capital (e.g., university buildings, endowments); (3) materials (e.g., paper, pens, computers if not capitalized); (4) service inputs (e.g., use of outside payroll, accounting, or information technology firms) Moreover, Harris and Goldrick-Rab (2011) concluded that “colleges can conceivably become more productive by leveraging technology, reallocating resources, and searching for cost-effective policies that promote student success” Depending on the specific objectives (or other regions), the determination of inputs as well as building the database would be different; however, they need to ensure the conditions and targets as outlined Hence, to this case study, the data-base as well as the conceptual frame works and other heterogeneity concerns based on the current situations and the premise idea for the school resources’ impacts on number of good graduates; the below concept section will discuss with more details

More researches rely on the EPF to evaluate the impact of educational resources (in term of educational environment) on student achievement (Glewwe et al., 2004, Glewwe & Kremer, 2006; Todd & Wolpin, 2003) have revealed that the growth on physical investments in educational environment lead to better student performance and other educational results Prominent variables of those studies are class-size and student-teacher ratio, they all have positively significant impact on student Besides, in some countries with low per capita income reveal that student outcome has positive relationship with available resources (Gamoran & Long, 2006)

In other aspects, traditional and positive impacts come from the extracurricular activities and School libraries Participating in extracurricular activities brings many benefits, giving students more likely to have higher grades, higher standardized test scores, higher levels of education and regularly attend to school Lonsdale (2003) on the report for the Australian School Library Association stated that library can have positive impacts on student achievement in term of reading score, literacy or learning more generally Furthermore on the positive impact of Extracurricular activities and School libraries could be found on researches of Fredricks and Eccles (2006); Gardner, Roth and Brooks-Gunn (2009); Lance (2002)… It seemed that these two factors have significant and profound effect on not only higher education but also other range of general education institutions

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 3.1 Concept

As far as the Overview of assurance & accreditation of higher education (OAAHE), there are 6 concepts to value the quality of higher education They are the quality of the input, quality of the output, the added-value (it equals to quality

of the input minus to quality of the output), academic values… In addition to these

6 concepts, the International Network of Quality Assurance in Higher Education has launched two definitions of the quality of higher education: (i) the adoption of the regulations; (ii) the achievement of set objectives This study based on the quality assessment perspective of "the output", for detail, it is the annual number of good graduates

The university can be considered as a firm, so its product will be the annual number of graduates And the quality of this product is really rated through the diploma of each student Good product quality, synonymous with the kind of graduates achieve good or excellent The research standpoint is from the service

provider or manufacturer, not from the perspective of external (service beneficiaries) In other words, the thesis mainly attempt to examine inner elemental factors of which the university could easily effect to those (increase or decrease financial objectives, policies to attract talents, investment in teaching scientific research )

Furthermore, we do not exercise the survey methodology to quantify explanatory variables of study processes We consider qualified graduates as final goods of the production processes; and investigated universities are the place where school resources within each of their own effect make impacts to the amount of good (and excellence) graduates

Thus, based on the Decree 06/VBHN-BGD&DT (2014) - promulgated Regulations on the evaluation criteria of Quality Assurance in Higher Education,

we picked out the elements of resources that one university could easily impact (easy to alter in a short period of time, or within months), as follows:

(1) Number of highly qualified teachers (M.A or higher degree)

(2) Learning facilities (investments and procurement of materials - equipment, new constructions )

(3) Research (investments in scientific research activities to improve the quality

of teaching and learning, innovating methods of teaching and learning ) (4) Extracurricular activities (investments in academic contests, sports competitions and other entertaining activities)

(5) Library (the dimension of books, reference, researches, curriculum…)

3.2 Data resources

The data resource is constructed in association with the management board

of the three universities supervised by MOIT: Industrial university of HCMC, HCMC University of food industry and Nguyen Tat Thanh University These are the most major higher educational institutions under management of MOIT, located

in the South of Vietnam The time extent of data is from 2004 to 2014, within the specific working on collecting and data properties as follow:

The number of graduates, within the scope of this study together on the expectation that student of technical faculties tend to access necessary resources more than economics students, we cooperated with the training department and other technical faculties to collect the data on number of Excellence, Good graduate students changing over years Because there are several sessions of the graduation consideration, we focused on the annual data of the diploma granted ceremony

Number of highly qualified teachers, by the authorization of human resources department and by searching in annual reports of scientific workforce, we collected the data on the changing in number of qualified technical instructor include all the qualified teacher with short-term contracts over the years The property of this data

is that instructor must be M.A or higher level of academic degree

Learning facilities, following to the monthly and quarterly databases of financial accounting department and Planning department, including annual reports and inspections reports; we collect the financial data on procurement of equipment

- supplies - practice materials, construction – upgrades within changing over year

Research, together with the assistance of Technology department, we examine the budget funding for scientific affairs related to the innovation and enhancement in teaching methods - learning amenities - learning curriculums, instructor’s quality and student’s research topics

Extracurricular activities, in partnership with the university youth union and department of student affairs, we examine the budget funding for all extracurricular activities toward students, such as music competitions, sport and academic contests, leisure activities, skills courses… Besides, we also look at investments funding to academic contests with the expectation that, via these competitions, students have

conditions to apply specialized knowledge, thereby raising their study skills and improve the quality of learning

Library, by the authorization and support from the library management board, we collected data on the system of books, documents belonging to all genres which have added, upgraded or augmented for the data warehouse (digital library and scale of library structure are also concerns to us, however, our time resources and learning scope are limited)

Table 3.2 Summary of variables

Variables Training

Quality

Number

of highly qualified teachers

Learning facilities Research

Extracur ricular activities

Library

Measure

ment

Number of graduates per year - (final average point higher

or equal to 6,5)

Number

of qualified technical instructor

s per year (M.A or higher level of academic degree)

Billion VND per year

Billion VND per year

Billion VND per year

Total number of books and references per year

3.3 Production function

According to a critical review by Nascimento (2008), this study has summarized many studies on the field of school resources effect on student achievement Focusing on global and methodological issues on EPF, the review

shown a picture of the controversy revolves around the impact of school resources

on student achievements, research that extends for decades in many countries, a variety of databases and random sampling including meta-analyses method, as well

as focus on differently specific research objectives He also point out some of the constraint of the previous studies in compare, as well as the note on the referring of exogenous and endogenous problems in EPF model Studies mentioned in his review generally concentrate on specific achievement, like test scores, and attempt

to estimate the model with the relevant explanatory variables, or nearly related, including quantifying variables by survey; which mean they try to detail as much as possible rely on a major concern such as student background, class-size, characteristics of instructors, educational environment… and its relevance “EPF researchers should be aware that, unless unusual well-executed educational random assignments or natural experiments take place, generating exogenous variation in the resources allocated to schools, utility maximization behaviors from parents and schools, as well as possible compensation for students’ background through extra school funds allocated by the Government to disadvantaged schools or districts, demand appropriate methodological solutions due to biases caused by potential endogeneity of resources to student achievement.” (Nascimento, 2008, p.26)

On the other hand, we did not find any specific research on the higher education in Vietnam with the EPL method or else related beside researches on the field of MBA that attempt to do research on satisfaction about the quality of higher education training services This study, as mentioned above and on the Concept section, we seek a way as a beginning to estimate effects of school resources on training quality, from the standpoint of education institution as a firm and its final goods as number of qualified graduates Thus, with the same idea of building a production model (analyses of production functions, takes the perspective of a decision maker to optimally choose the combination of inputs), we conduct a simple equation as below: