Learning approach and competency in relation to employability in high tuition fee environments

APPENDIX D: CREATIVE THINKING 192 APPEDNIX H: TUITION FEE OF ENGLISH TEACHING PROGRAMS OFFERED BY DOMESTIC UNIVERSITIES ADVANCED PROGRAMS AND APPENDIX I: LIST OF NON-PUBLIC UNIVERSITIE

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HO CHI MINH CITY

INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

-

Nguyễn Minh Tuấn

LEARNING APPROACH AND COMPETENCY

IN RELATION TO EMPLOYABILITY

IN HIGH TUITION FEE ENVIRONMENTS

A dissertation submitted for the degree of

This work is dedicated to my wife and my son Without your inspiration,

I would never have come through all the hard time of this dissertation Your supports have kept me up on my feet for the last four years, especially when I was frustrated the most Your love has helped me pass all the sadness and complete my goals Thanks to my beloved son, Minh Nhat, I have many students, but you are the most important I hope that seeing your father acquire this degree,

as well as do the teaching in higher education set an example of strong will and hard-working to you

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

First, I would like to thank Dr Phan Trieu Anh who has provided a lot of helpful advice during this Ph.D program You are a very kind man and always ready to attend any problem I encountered I also would like to thank Dr Le

Vinh Trien for his invaluable ideas You are very supportive and encouraging

In addition, I would like to thank all my colleagues, and management in

IU for all the support and sharing the workload burden with me for the last four and a half years Without your help, this dissertation could not be completed

Moreover, I also would like to extend my thank to my friends and

students for the data collection and entry

Finally, I would like to say thank you to my team members in Australia, Italy, Turkey, Argentina who get me inspired and set off on this long and

ABSTRACT

The employability of university graduates has long been an irritating problem in higher education while university tuition fees have been sharply on the rise The problem could pose a more severe threat to any high-tuition fee environment Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other Capabilities are determining factors used by employers in recruitment and selection Knowledge and skills can be learned/acquired through training, but abilities and others are genetically transferred or obtained through socialization In other words, universities’ curricula can cover desired knowledge and skills, but usually not abilities and others The focus of this dissertation is to study the influence of learning approaches and competency on business graduates’ employability in high-tuition fee environments

This dissertation addresses the graduates’ employability problem with a series of four studies using quantitative methods which are summarized as below

• Study 1 verifies Approach and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) is a reliable and valid instrument to measure learning approaches Learning approaches and competencies are two factors which were identified as directly related to knowledge and skills If these two factors can be measured and manipulated, it is expected that knowledge and skills can be managed to the better employability for graduates In order to provide a reliable and valid scale to measure

students’ learning approach, in Study 1, the abbreviated version of ASSIST was tested to be invariant throughout various languages and educational contexts 430 Argentinean, 292 Australian, 403 Italian,

350 Turkish, and 260 Vietnamese students studying basic statistics subjects participated in this study We used factor analysis to check whether the three-factor model remains unchanged throughout the five samples and the configural and measurement invariance are verified, and ASSIST is an appropriate measurement scale for multinational studies, and the result supports this

• Next, there are two studies (Study 2 and Study 3) about the influence

of learning approaches, demographic factors on academic outcome In Study 2, demographic factors consist of gender, parental education, admission score, mathematics preference in high school, whereas academic outcome is limited in mathematics and mathematics-related subjects Six hundred and sixteen students participated ASSIST is used to measure learning approach A multiple regression analysis is performed to assess the relationship Study 2 finds that surface learning approach is negatively related to academic outcome that is commonly known worldwide However, strategic and deep learning approaches are discovered not to have any relationship with academic outcome

• In Study 3, demographic factors include admission score, family income, High School Grade Point Average (HSGPA), and personality,

whereas academic outcome is taken from mathematics (calculus) only Seven hundred and ninety-five students from six universities in Ho Chi Minh city participate in this study The multiple regression technique is used to conduct data analysis Deep and strategic approaches are found to be positively linked to academic performance However, surface approach is negatively linked to academic performance The discrepancy between results in Study 2 and Study 3 indicates the assessment method of mathematics (calculus) subject is fairly good but assessment methods of mathematics and mathematics-related subjects are not When asked, instructors always want their students to devote, commit, and exert much energy into learning In other words, instructors expect students to apply deep learning approach while studying the subjects This raises the assessment problem of instructors in subjects in this study Put differently, universities’ subjects and teaching methods should be designed to promote deep learning approach among students and reward them correspondingly

• In the final study (Study 4) in this dissertation, skills needed for graduates are comprehensively identified and measured using the Behavioural Competency Dictionary (BCD) of Organizational Readiness Office (ORO) as the instrumentation Three skills from the list of 24 skills in this dictionary are removed, and the English skill is added to take the local context into account In the 2011 survey, 70

International University (IU – a good representation of high-tuition fee environments in 2011) senior business students, 44 IU business graduates, and 80 employers/managers in numerous organizations participated In the 2017 survey, 98, 79, and 209 responses were collected, respectively In addition, the author also collected 108 responses from senior students in Hoa Sen University, University of Finance and Marketing, and University of Technical Education The author compares the means of employability scores among various groups to decide which one is better IU’s students have made some progress during the last six years (2011-2017) with the help of various skills clubs However, it seems that IU graduates have still fallen short

of employers’ expectation IU students (2017) only exceed employers’ requirements at English That is to say, the improving of IU graduates could not keep pace with the increasing requirements in the skilled labor market Other universities’ graduates have been facing the same problems Universities are expected to improve students’ awareness

of dictionaries of competency and be more creative in developing other approaches which can close the skills gap between employers’ expectation and graduates’ possession Numerous employability skills are better attained in practice rather than in classroom settings Furthermore, the impacts of learned skills are quite powerful at the initial start of graduates’ career but fading fast as graduates acquire more job-specific or occupation-related skills working in practice

Recommended solutions include setting up centers to connect students, alumni, and employers; establishing triangle partnerships among universities, students, and employers to equip students with employability skills during their course of university schooling

The Vietnam education has been dynamic and labor market has become more and more demanding Hence, future studies about graduate employability

in high-tuition fee environments should be implemented on a regular basis to ensure universities’ graduates match the skilled-labor market’s requirements, in particular, and to assist Vietnam’s economic development needs in general

1.2 UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEMS & EMPLOYABILITY OF

2.2 GRADUATES’ CAPABILITIES AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

2.3.1.5 Relationship between Demographic Factors & Academic Outcome 49

2.3.1.5.1 Relationship between Gender & Academic Performance 50

2.3.1.5.2 Relationship between Parental Education & Academic Performance 51

2.3.1.5.6 Relationship between Personality & Academic Performance 53

3.2.1.3 Statistical Analysis 77

4.2.4 Academic Outcome Prediction Using Multiple Regression Analysis 104

4.2.5 Learning Approaches in Relation to Demographic Factors Using T-tests.

105

4.3.2 Variable Grouping Using Exploratory Factor Analysis 108

4.3.3 Academic Outcome Prediction Using Multiple Regression Analysis 109

4.4.2 Skills Possessed/Required/Expected Comparisons Using T-tests & Paired

5.1.1 Key Findings & Recommendations for Practice & Policy 121

5.1.1.2 About the influence of learning approaches together with demographic

5.1.1.3 About graduates in comparisons with employers’ requirements and the

APPENDIX D: CREATIVE THINKING 192

APPEDNIX H: TUITION FEE OF ENGLISH TEACHING PROGRAMS

OFFERED BY DOMESTIC UNIVERSITIES (ADVANCED PROGRAMS) AND

APPENDIX I: LIST OF NON-PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1: Goodness-of-Fit Statistics for Test of Invariance of the

Abbreviated ASSIST for Learning Approaches to Statistics Across Countries Assuming the Unconstrained Model (Baseline) to be Correct

Table 1.2: Reliability Measures (Cronbach’s alpha) for Learning

Approaches to Statistics in the Argentinean, Italian, Turkish, and Vietnamese Samples

Table 2.1: Demographic Information of Respondents

Table 2.2: Rotated Component Matrix

Table 2.3: KMO and Bartlett’s Test

Table 2.4: Rotated Component Matrix

Table 2.5: Reliability Statistics

Table 2.6: Item-Total Statistics

Table 2.7: Item-Total Statistics

Table 2.8: Item-Total Statistics

Table 2.9: Coefficients of the first regression

Table 2.10: Coefficients of the second regression

Table 2.11: Comparisons of Learning Approaches in Relation to Gender Parental Education, and Math Preference in High School

Table 3.1: Demographic Information of Respondents

Table 3.2: Reliability Check

Table 3.3: KMO and Bartlett’s Test

Table 3.4: Rotated Component Matrix

Table 3.5: Coefficients of the first regression

Table 3.6: Coefficients of the second regression

Table 4.1: Comparisons in skills possessed/required/expected among

different groups – T-tests

Table 4.2: Gaps in Pair Comparisons in Table 4.1 and their Statistical

Significance – Paired T-tests

Table 5: Comparisons between High-Tuition Fee and Low-Tuition Fee

Programs

Table 6: Summary of Key Findings to Expand Knowledge Base

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1a: Development of an employer’s beliefs (Bailly 2008)

Figure 1b: Public and private learning process (Farber & Gibbons, 1996)

Figure 2a: Conceptual Model

Figure 2b: Structure of this Study

Figure 3: Conceptual Model of Study 2

Figure 4: Conceptual Model of Study 3

Figure 5: The three-factor model of ASSIST for statistics students

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AACSB: The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business

ABET: Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc

ASI: Approaches to Study Inventory

ASSIST: Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students

BC: British Council

BCD: Behavioral Dictionary of Competency

CFA: Confirmatory Factor Analysis

CV: Curriculum Vitae

EFA: Exploratory Factor Analysis

ESQ: Encoding Style Questionnaire

GCD: General Competency Dictionary

HDI: Human Development Indicators

HSGPA: High School Grade Point Average

IELTS: International English Language Testing System

IQ: Intelligence Quotient

IU: International University

KSAO: Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Others

MOET: Ministry of Education and Training

MSLQ: Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire

ORO: Organizational Readiness Office

RASI: Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory

SPQ: Study Process Questionnaire

UK: United Kingdom

UNDP: United Nations Development Program

VGU: Vietnamese German University

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Vietnam has been a developing market on a fast track of changes during last two decades The availability of a sufficient skilled labor force is one of the deciding factors behind this success (International Labour Office, 2010) Vietnam’s HDI index of 0.694 in 2017, which positioned the country in the medium human development category, ranked 116 out of 189 countries all over the world (UNDP, 2018) The low ranking of Vietnam’s HDI can partly be blamed to the persistent weakness of the high education sector However, this HDI index of 0.694 indicates an increase of 46.1 percent between 1990 and 2017, which shows a lot of Vietnam’s efforts so as to overcome obstacles To sustain the economy development, Vietnam must confront the problem of skilled labor shortage due to increasing demand from various domestic and foreign employers, where knowledge and employability skills, especially English fluency plays a key role in the labor market (Jennings, 2017; Vietnam News, 2018)

With the awareness of the new demands and fierce global competition, some new universities, such as International University (IU) were established in

2003 with English as a means of teaching in all subjects Later, Vietnamese German University (VGU) was established in Ho Chi Minh city in 2008, and it also offered all programs in English At present, all existing universities have offered various twinning programs (“chương trình liên kết”) or advanced

programs (“chương trình tiên tiến”) in English with the aim of meeting these new challenges Twining programs in Vietnam offer learners certificates or degrees Curricula are imported from foreign partners or with some modification to fit well into the domestic context English is the means of teaching Degrees or certificates are granted by foreign partners Students of twining programs spend

a part of the program in Vietnam and the rest in partners’ countries Twining programs are usually designated as, for instance, 1 + 3, 2 + 2, 3 + 1, 4 + 0 with the first number shows the number of years students stay in Vietnamese institutions and the second number indicates the number of years students spend

in partners’ campuses Twining programs are administered with Degree 73/2012/NĐ-CP dated 26 September 2012 The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), two national universities, and three regional universities are entitled to grant permission for establishment and monitor the operation of these twining programs Whereas, twining programs are established by the cooperation between foreign institutions and domestic ones, advanced programs are part of a project encouraged by the Vietnamese government to help universities internationalize curricula and improve teaching quality by benchmarking programs of high-ranking universities from all over the world Advanced programs, which were first triggered by the Vietnamese government

in 2006, adapt curricula from high-ranking universities worldwide, and use English as a means of instruction Advanced programs are believed to help institutions in developing their capabilities and get these programs closer to regional standards The obvious advantages of these twinning/advanced

programs are that students can directly approach up-to-date materials/curricula instead of Vietnamese translated versions which are probably lagging years behind, all subjects are taught in English, experienced/knowledgeable Vietnamese and foreign teachers with advanced teaching methods are selected, classrooms are well-equipped with cutting-edge facilities, there are opportunities

to study overseas on exchange programs, specifically students in twining programs can get foreign universities’ degrees In addition, all these programs get approved by either MOET, national universities, or regional universities before being operational to ensure their education quality Foreign universities also implement their own quality management measures to make sure their education service in Vietnam conform with international standards

Moreover, thanks to their non-discriminating policy of domestic or international campus students, these programs have become more and more attractive, even some students who had been admitted into domestic programs switched to these programs to get a foreign degree Some parents who could afford to send their children to study overseas chose these programs, so their sons/daughters would have more time to improve their English and get set in international study environments before going overseas to complete their degrees Some twinning programs (e.g., Sunderland University) have provided students with two-step curricula If students complete the first three-year course, they are awarded a college degree Then, students can study a one-year top-up program to get a bachelor degree, or they can find a college-degree required job and will return to complete the top-up program after saving enough money This

arrangement offers a great deal of benefits to students in case they could not complete the four-year universities program due to any unexpected reason In comparison with twining programs, advanced programs offered by Vietnamese universities have been designed based on world-class universities’ curricula with some adjustment to be compatible with renown universities in South East Asia Students in these advanced programs have also enjoyed as much privilege as their peers in twinning programs, e.g., students in IU domestic programs or twining programs can sit in same classes of many subjects and also have full access to IU library’s materials; or University of Finance and Marketing adopts its twining programs’ curricula into its advance programs and share the same source of materials/pool of teachers/set of facilities between them

However, the main disadvantage of these programs is that their tuition fee is much higher than conventional Vietnamese programs Therefore, the employability of students in these programs which can be considered as ‘return

on investment’ is very important for their long-term success

(See Appendix G: Tuition Fee of Twinning Programs)

(See Appendix H: Tuition Fee of English Teaching Programs Offered by Domestic Universities (advanced programs) and Foreign Invested

Universities)

Note: The programs in Appendix G and Appendix H are offered in a credit-based system, so students can make progress at their own pace The tuition fees per semester are the average numbers used for an indicative purpose

1.1 HIGH TUITION FEE ENVIRONMENTS

Traditionally, the Vietnamese university education was not for the majority but outstanding students All universities were public and non-public universities did not exist before 1988 After graduation, students did not worry much about getting employed They were assigned by the Vietnamese government to stated-owned organizations in different sectors of the planned economy system Students often did not have a say about their future organizations and had to accept their assignment by default Otherwise, they had

to look for jobs in private sectors, which could not offer as many privileges as in state-owned sectors, and often unstable In other words, stated-owned organizations got top priority to recruit talented students and did often not face any problem to select able candidates to fill vacant positions

Frankly speaking, the Vietnamese government always placed the owned sector at the top priority and treated the private sector unfavorably during this period Moreover, the public universities were heavily subsidized by the Vietnamese government The tuition fee was very low or free depending on types

state-of major and university Parents state-often did not worry much about financial problems which might occur while their children got through their course of university learning This situation strongly influenced the mindset of university students and their parents regarding the unemployment problem The common thread here was that everyone relied too much on the government and became

However, Vietnam has been changing since the last decade of the 20thcentury Vietnam’s socio-economic system has been strongly reformed since the sixth Communist Party meeting in 1986 The Vietnam economy has been steered from a centralized to a market-oriented one with socialism destination, and non-state-owned economic sectors have been encouraged to develop Since the US lifted the embargo in 1994, Vietnam economy has strongly developed and integrated into the world economy The Vietnamese government has recognized the need to develop the Vietnam socio-economic system following international practices in response to the fast changing of local and global demands The Strategies for socio-economic development in the period of 2011-2020 (Vietnam Prime Minister, 2012) shows the route for Vietnam to become a fundamentally modern, industrialized country by the end of 2020 To achieve the objectives, the rapid development of skilled labor force has been selected as one of the three

breakthrough drivers To be specific, “improve the training quality, meet the labor requirements for socio-economic development; equip people with creative ability, independent thinking, citizenship responsibility, occupational ethics and skills, foreign language competency, work discipline, …ability to meet the changes in labor market and a part is able to compete regionally and worldwide” (Vietnam Prime Minister, 2012) Taking these development

strategies into account, Vietnamese education system would have been transforming into a popular, advanced one with the encouragement of deep and intensive integration into worldwide education system (Vietnam Prime Minister, 2012) However, the Vietnamese tertiary education system also needs a lot of

effort to build curricula to conform with a socialist-oriented market economy, increasing domestic demands, and international integration at regional and global level (Pham & Fry, 2004)

Nonetheless, the Vietnamese government understood that it is impossible for them to go for the task alone, but to ask for the participation of all society members In the education sector, one of innovative idea was to accept the existence of non-public universities Consequently, this has given birth to many non-public universities and facilitated their proliferation In 1988, the Thang Long University in the north of Vietnam was established as the first non-public university in Vietnam, following by the HCMC Open University as the first non-public university in the south of Vietnam in 1990 The MOET issued the temporary regulation 196/TCCB dated January 21st

, 1994 to provide a guideline for running non-public universities This temporary regulation was replaced by the Prime Minister’s decision 86/2000/QĐ-TTg dated 2000 Based on this decision, non-public universities were classified as non-profit organizations Since 2005, the Vietnamese government has issued many laws to support non-public education sectors The education law dated 2005 (Vietnam National Assembly, 2005) confirms the State’s favorable treatment of non-public sectors (article 68) and encouragement for international cooperation (article 104) The Higher Education Renovation Agenda 2006-2020 suggests methods to enhance the competitiveness of Vietnamese tertiary education system while integrating into the global system

Consequently, up to September 2009, the number of tertiary education institutions increased to 440 which consisted of 77 non-public institutions The number of higher education students was 1,719,499 which was a thirteen-fold increase by comparison with that in 1987 (MOET, 2018) The education law dated 2009 (Vietnam National Assembly, 2009) verified the State granted priority in education investment, encouragement and protection of legitimate benefits for domestic organizations, Vietnamese, Vietnamese residing overseas, foreigners, and foreign organizations who were investing in the education sector

The education law dated 2012 (Vietnam National Assembly, 2012) gave favorable treatment in land, tax, credit, and staff training to encourage private universities, and foreign invested universities to run as non-profit organizations This education law also gave favorable permission to establishment of private capital-intensive universities (article 12)

The education law dated 2015 (Vietnam National Assembly, 2015) encouraged the foreign cooperation and investment including

• Establishment of educational institutions

• Setting up twining programs with Vietnamese counterparts Thanks to the introduction of above education laws, the number of universities increased to 235 which consists of 170 public and 65 private universities in 2018 There were 1,767,879 students which are made up of 1,528,904 and 243,975 students in public and private universities, respectively There were 688,641 high-school students applying for university admission in

2018, and that was an increase of 7.5 percent by comparison with 2017 (MOET, 2018)

The Vietnamese government has devoted more effort to create an even playground for all economic sectors (Vietnam National Assembly, 2004) The state-owned sector has not been able to enjoy too many privileges granted by the government as in the past, and it has been exposed to compete with other sectors for production factors in general and skilled-labor in particular This practice has helped the private sector grow and foreign invested companies increase their share in the Vietnam economy Graduates have been benefited with this trend They have got more options looking for employment after graduation Salary and benefits-in-kind in non-state sectors have usually surpassed those in the state sector (Hong, 2019) especially in foreign invested companies where graduates have been able to acquire valuable skills and experiences that could help graduates a lot in their career advancement and personal development (Impactus, 2017) However, there always are two sides of the same coin The negative effect

of this trend is that the government is free from the task of job assignment, and graduates are wholly held responsible for their employment A workplace after graduation is no longer granted but is something to earn Job moving is no longer

in particular, life-time employment becomes very rare, job rotation is a common practice, and people keep moving to new jobs with better compensation and/or future opportunities The competition for any vacant position between applicants has been intense Graduates who fail to meet or exceed employers’ demands are not able to gain a foothold in the skilled labor market The statistics from the

Ministry of Labor, War Invalids, and Social Welfare (2017) verifies that the number of university degree holders staying unemployed soared to 218,800 in

2016 and has continued increasing In other words, there is a mismatch problem between universities’ products and employers’ expectation

To put it straight, this problem has been quite common all over the world, even in developed countries According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia (2017), the unemployment rates among fresh graduates have gone up from 30%

in 2013 to 34% in 2016 There was only 53% of the 273,373 graduates in 2015 who could get their first job within six months of graduation In the Philippines, there was 692,602 fresh graduates in April 2018, and more than 600,000 graduates (86.7%) joined the unemployed army (The Manila Times, 2018) In the UK, the unemployment rate for graduates was 3.1%, and about a fifth of graduates was in low or medium skilled jobs This underemployment presented

a huge waste of talent which could hamper the UK’s economy development (Financial Times, 2017) In 2017, 29.2% of Australian graduates could not find

a full-time job within four months from graduation (Social Research Center, 2017) However, the percentage of graduates getting employed after graduating varied much from the highest of 83.9% in Charles Sturt University to the lowest

of 55.5% in Flinders University Charles Sturt University believed its success lied in getting more experience in industry and less about campus conventional method of teaching during the final year of course of university schooling (Lambert, 2017)

To develop and prosper in this fast-changing environment, many universities have offered their own advanced programs or set up twining programs with foreign universities These twining programs can be in the forms

of one-plus-three (i.e., one year in Vietnam and three years overseas), two (two years in Vietnam and two years overseas), three-plus-one (three years

two-plus-in Vietnam and one year overseas), or four-plus-zero (four years two-plus-in Vietnam) Many foreign universities have sensed the opportunity and set foot in Vietnam since the last 15 years by establishing campuses in Vietnam (with RMIT as the pioneer) Lately, some universities were founded with the help of the Vietnamese government and other foreign governments including the Vietnamese German

university in 2008 and the Fulbright University Vietnam in 2016 (See Appendix I: List of non-public universities in Vietnam)

The competitiveness of these programs is explicit and indisputable Students are surrounded with an English-speaking environment Textbooks and reference materials are plentiful and updated Curricula adopted from well-known universities ensure students may obtain the same knowledge level of their peers from all over the world and be knowledgeable of the fast-ever changing international business environment It is also worth mentioning that almost all lecturers/instructors of these programs graduated from renowned universities Government documents require that the lecturers in these English-based programs must (1) have a master or doctor degree in the field of teaching, (2) achieve level C1 (proficiency) in ELP scale of Common Framework of Reference for Languages or complete a degree program overseas, and (3) have

at least a three-year experience using Vietnamese to teach the subject (MOET 2014; The Government of Vietnam 2008, 2012) Therefore, these lecturers/instructors who are generally able and have sound knowledge in their fields can offer a lot of help to students for the best of their advancement throughout their course of university schooling Graduates of these programs can enjoy advantages looking for a job in the labor market English is no longer a barrier for these graduates looking for a job in multi-national companies or finding an opportunity to work overseas The job market boundary is no longer confined within Vietnam but open to the whole world In short, these international programs help students to get a good initial start and to gain access

to more opportunities for a better future The director of International Education Exchange Center, Ly Thien Trang said students in these programs had strength

in future development, especially English proficiency (Vietnam Moi, 2018) The director of Communication and Admission of Hoa Sen University, Hoang Duc Binh stated the employment rate of students in these programs were always high with attractive compensation package These students with English fluency were always in advantageous position seeking a job in foreign companies/organizations It is also pointed out three advantages of students in these programs which included English fluency, foreign degrees, and soft skills acquired through extra-curriculum activities (Thanh Nien, 2013)

Tuition fee has been the main financial source to cover overall spending

in private universities and played a more and more important role in public universities whereas the Vietnamese government has been asking public

universities to strengthen their financial autonomy (Nang, 2020) Public universities in Vietnam have exercised their financial autonomy following two legal bases: (i) Decree 43/2006/NĐ-CP and Decree 16/2015/NĐ-CP; (ii) Resolution 77/NQ-CP According to Tap Chi Tai Chinh (2017) in a study of 40 public universities during the period of 2011-2015

• Revenues from the state budget contributed about 30% - 40% total revenues; revenues from tuition fee and other sources occupied up to 60% - 70%

• On average, public universities were expected to balance their regular expenditures by about 75% from related-business revenues, such as the tuition fee and other fees However, this proportion of recurrent expenditures is not sufficient to ensure enough resources to increase investment in facilities and to secure additional income for staff and lecturers every year

One solution for this financial-shortage problem is that the universities must balance their regular expenditures on regular training courses from the revenues of advanced or twinning programs because the tuition fees in these programs are manifold higher than those in Vietnamese programs In order to set

up the low boundary for the high-tuition fee context, the program of Meiho

University of Taiwan with the lowest tuition fee of 26,400,000 VND/year (see Appendix G) was usable In other words, the concept of high tuition fee

environment is defined as a program with the average tuition fee of 26,400,000 VND/year or more With the GDP per capita of Vietnam in 2018 is 45,120,000

VND (Tong Cuc Thong Ke, 2018), that boundary tuition fee represents a significant spending (approximately 58.5%) for an average income household in Vietnam

Reasonably, with high tuition fees, the expectation of students and parents

is very high (Lien, 2016) The key dimension in the expectation is the possibility

to get a good job after graduation In other words, whether their “investment” is justified This is a life-threatening condition to these university programs to continue their long-term operations It is worth mentioning that none of universities could guarantee that 100% of their graduates would be employed but this employment rate is very important in quality assessment and brand name development (Social Research Centre, 2019) Put differently, this rate can be helpful to explain why one university becomes more attractive to students than another

In addition to the high expectation of students and parents about graduates’ employability, another reason to study high-tuition fee programs is that those programs could have sufficient resources to improve their “products”

to meet and exceed the skilled labor market’s requirements It is worth reminding that universities running traditional programs with low tuition fees also want to improve their products’ quality Nonetheless, their resource constraints could make many improving measures impossible

Furthermore, as per the author’s understanding, this dissertation is the first study of this type in Vietnam Therefore, with the scope set within high-tuition fee environments, the findings are expected to be less erratic and

meaningful conclusions could be drawn This could also become a limitation of this dissertation and provide the direction for future research where the study scope could cover all higher education environments

1.2 UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEMS AND EMPLOYABILITY OF GRADUATES

One key function of education is to train and develop people to meet the demands of the skilled labor markets Since the 1960s, various studies have tried

to address the relationship between education and employment (e.g., Becker 1964) However, not before but until 1990s when the accomplishment of graduates became an indicator in quality of education, universities and students started to become responsive to employers’ requirements Consequently, more and more studies have included employers’ perceptions about the outputs of universities In other words, how graduates are viewed and assessed by employers to get employed York (2004) developed the concept of employability

as “a set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes – that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy”

When trying to address the relationship between education achievement and finding a job in the labor market, human capital theory (e.g., Schultz, 1961)

or job market signaling theory (e.g., Stiglitz, 1975) were often in use The human capital theory interprets that people with better education can have higher

easier for more highly educated people to get employed and a higher pay Nonetheless, human capital theory is developed with the assumption that employers could well assess and justify candidates’ ability Regarding the imperfection of available information, the above is not often holding true (Levhari & Weiss, 1974)

Job market signaling theory assumes that recruitment is an investment decision of employers (e.g., Arrow 1973) Employers receive signals about job seekers’ ability and make decision in uncertainty Education credentials can be used as indicators of ability Wiers-Jenssen (2008) argues that education’s signaling effect is weak if employers do not know that educational organization

Human capital and job-signaling theories show that education helps people in getting positive outcomes in the labor market Nevertheless, those theories cannot explain the ongoing process of how a recruitment decision was made (Kjelland 2008) Many studies still consider educational outputs as a quantity which can be objectively identified and measured Nonetheless, Bailly (2008) goes a step further in his approach to define educational output taking employers’ beliefs into account According to Bailly, human capital and signaling theories take into effect reflecting the employers’ belief systems which

go through three stages of development In the first stage, employers make hiring decision based on their initial beliefs about the candidate, especially his/her educational achievement In this regard, the educational achievement can be referred to as initial signals In the second stage, the vacant position is filled, and the employer can have opportunities to re-evaluate his/her hiring decision taking

the newly recruit’s performance into account The employer’s beliefs can be modified These new beliefs will be utilized in the next recruitment process (Bailly, 2008) In the third stage, the adjustment process in the employer’s beliefs comes to a saturation point In other words, the employer thinks that he/she has acquired sufficient experience to justify any hiring decision Put differently, in Bailly’s model (see Figure 1a), the employer’s beliefs are formed and developed through a trial-and-error process

Figure 1a: Development of an employer’s beliefs (Bailly 2008)

Farber and Gibbons (1996) develop a similar model with the learning process of the employer in Bailly’s model named “private learning” and adding the “public learning” concept to form their own conceptual framework Their reasoning is that the learning process of all market participants can also be observed by the employer and partially help forming the employer’s beliefs (see Figure 1b)

An employer’s adjusted beliefs

Decisions on recruitment

Self-confirmation or correction through trial-and-error process

Intended and unintended performance of employees

at work Initial signals

Figure 1b: Public and private learning process (Farber & Gibbons, 1996)

According to the Farber and Gibbons’ model, employers’ beliefs are formed by initial signals and private/public learning processes Initial signals influence employers’ beliefs before private and public learning processes In the viewpoint of higher institutions trying to form employers’ beliefs, the study tries

to identify those initial signals and how employers perceive them Levy (2006) argues that employers who get connected through professional network are likely

to develop their beliefs through their networks and professionalization Other studies also suggest that employers’ hiring decision can be influenced by consultants Employers can make similar decisions under the same consultancy

In addition, governmental bodies and professional organizations can also set out rules and regulations which in turn can become initial signals to form employers’ beliefs Historically, the U.S federal government has been the pioneer to set up the Knowledge/Skills/Abilities (KSA) model in recruitment activities, whereas

Initial signals Employers’

beliefs

Public learning

Decisions on recruitment

Private learning

Performance outcomes

• Knowledge is the subjects, topics, and information that a candidate should possess to fill the vacant position Knowledge is directly applicable in the job performance

• Skills are proficiencies which are often acquired through training

• Abilities are enduring talents which can benefit people to perform a job Abilities are often innate and very difficult to be acquired through formal trainings

Later, KSA became KSAO with O as others which can cover specific attributes, e.g., having experiences working in a particular environment In other words, KSAO can be considered as initial signals to influence employers’ beliefs Employers often use Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Others (KSAO) model to recruit new students, where knowledge and skills are learned and acquired through training (e.g., Schmidt & Hunter, 1998)

In addition to KSAO, other organizations can use different models to recruit and select candidates, e.g.,

• Adam Mendler, CEO of The Veloz Group and founder of Beverly Hills Chairs, Custom Tobacco and Veloz Solutions suggest attitudes, grit, and fit into the corporate culture (Mendler, 2018)

• Universal Class Inc (2018) proposes hard-skills and soft-skills where hard-skills are the technical know-how for a particular job, and soft-skills are difficult-to-measure personal qualities and social attributes

to fit well into the job

• University of Alberta (2018) advises to consider various factors which include

o Application documents

o Degrees, certifications

o Interview evaluations

o Personal fit However, these criteria for recruitment and selection of a job candidate could also be reclassified into KSAO

• Attitudes, grit: Abilities

• Fit into corporate culture: others (David, et al., 1991)

• Hard skills: knowledge

• Soft skills: skills

• Application document: knowledge/skills

• Degrees, certification: knowledge

• Interview evaluations: skills/abilities

• Personal fit: others

Therefore, KSAO is a suitable model to study initial signals in various contexts

In addition to Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Others, Burns and Flam (1987) list some exogeneous factors which can also influence employers’ beliefs, e.g., the larger cultural environment surrounding the organizations, specific economy conditions, and the organizations’ attributes These factors are called exogeneous because they do not depend on neither employers nor employers’ social actions The list of exogeneous factors could be numerous but due to the

resource limitation, this study focuses only on KSAO with the hope that improving factors in KSAO could help university enhance initial signals to employers’ beliefs and graduates’ employability

Moreover, abilities and others are inherited or attained through social interactions that are usually out of scope of universities’ curricula In other words, universities can do more help to their students in the areas of knowledge and skills but not in abilities and others Consequently, this study focuses on graduates’ knowledge and skills which can be moderated by universities With more understanding of these factors and their links to employers’ beliefs of employability, universities can be in a better position to set up appropriate strategies to elevate their graduates’ employability

The director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, John Longworth (2015) stated that British students often do not have sufficient skills and self-discipline required in the workplace Khir (2006) said that UK graduates have been falling short of knowledge and generic skills Vietnamese students have been facing the similar problem with more than 400,000 university graduates every year, but many of them cannot find a job (Van, 2016) As a pioneer in offering advanced/twinning programs using English as a means of teaching all subjects, there is an increasing concern about whether IU graduates can meet labor market requirements