The Politics of Educational Diplomacy in Vietnam: Educational Exchanges under Doi Moi

Author(s): Zachary Abuza

Source: Asian Survey , Jun., 1996, Vol. 36, No. 6 (Jun., 1996), pp. 618-631
Published by: University of California Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2645795

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 THE POLITICS OF EDUCATIONAL
DIPLOMACY IN VIETNAM
Educational Exchanges Under Doi Moi

____________ Zachary Abuza

With the advent of economic reform in 1986, the

Vietnamese leadership embarked on a program of educational exchanges
with the West. Ostensibly to train a new generation of leaders and techno-
crats, exchanges with Western countries have exploded-especially the
number of privately funded students. The various decisions on such ex-
changes have not been made without apprehension and debate and have been
directly linked to the political balance of conservatives and liberals and the
pace of the country's economic reform program. Moreover, the battle to con-
trol the exchange program has included at least three different ministries as
well as the Office of the Prime Minister. Why exchanges began, who
prompted and who has resisted them, and were motives other than simply
training-such as foreign policy objectives-behind them are questions this
article seeks to answer. It will also examine the most sensitive exchanges of
all: those with the United States.
Throughout its long colonial and revolutionary history, overseas student
exchanges have been an integral part of Vietnam's educational system and
the training of its elite. Even after the reunification of the country in 1975,
educational exchange was still necessary as Vietnam's consistent budgetary
shortfalls precluded it from developing tertiary education. Most of the budg-
etary allocation for education went to developing primary and secondary
schools, and in this, Vietnam has been very successful. Between 1955-75
the number of students enrolled in primary and secondary schools increased
from under two million to over 11 million. In 1990 Vietnam's literacy rate

Zachary Abuza is a doctoral candidate at The Fletcher School of Law

and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Mass., and was a Research Fellow at the Institute of
International Relations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hanoi, in 1995-96.

3 1996 by The Regents of the University of California

618

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 ZACHARY ABUZA 619

was 88%, which according to the UNDP, is one of the highest in the world.1
But with its investment in primary and secondary schools during the 1980s,
Vietnam could not afford to develop higher education; only 5-10% of college
applicants could be enrolled.2 As early as 1985, it was noted that the system
was failing to produce the technocrats Vietnam needs, a gap widened by the
country's leap into the world economy.
In order to make up for the shortfall in tertiary education, until 1990 Viet-
nam relied solely on the Soviet Union and Eastern European states to provide
most higher education resources such as books, data, equipment, facilities,
and human resources. In this period, Vietnam sent 2,400 students and 22,000
others for vocational training to seven socialist countries annually. From
1951-1990, more than 6,783 doctors, 34,000 university students, and 72,000
technical cadres were trained in the former Socialist bloc.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Vietnamese students
continued to get language training in the West, primarily France and Great
Britain, but these exchanges ceased in 1979-80 with Vietnam's invasion of
Cambodia, which isolated Vietnam from all Western educational institutions
until the late 1980s. Vietnam only sent 200 students to noncommunist coun-
tries during the decade.3
The adoption of dci moi (renovation) represented a fundamental change in
the outlook of the Vietnamese leaders, who no longer saw the world in terms
of two mutually antagonistic camps. They recognized Vietnam's need to be
integrated into the world economy, and to do this, the need for foreign trained
personnel who understood the workings of the capitalist system. Clearly,
then, the most important educational "decision" under dci moi was the deci-
sion to begin direct exchanges with Western institutions, academic organiza-
tions, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). By October 1990,
Vietnam's educational services had established official relations with 40
countries, seven NGOs, 10 international institutes, and many higher educa-
tion schools and other organizations. More important, these links led to in-
creased funding. By 1995 Vietnam's educational sector had attracted nearly
$40 million in bilateral ODA, $20.5 million from United Nations agencies

1. Vietnam's 88% rate in 1990 compares with 45% for less developed countries and 64% for
all developing countries. Statistical Data, 1930-84 (Hanoi: Statistical Data Publishing House,
1985), p. 162; and UNDP, Development Co-operation: Vietnam, 1992 Report (Hanoi: UNDP,
1993), p. 9.
2. Suzanne Rubin, "Learning for Life? Glimpse from a Vietnamese School," in David Marr
and Christine White, eds., Postwar Vietnam: Dilemmas in Socialist Development (Ithaca:
Southeast Asia Program, 1988), p. 57.
3. David Marr, "Education, Research, and Information Circulation in Contemporary Viet-
nam," in William S. Turley and Mark Selden, eds., Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism: Doi Moi
in Comparative Perspective (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), p. 345.

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 620 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXVI, NO. 6, JUNE 1996

and $110 million from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.4
This has been essential as the level of total assistance provided by the former
Soviet Union declined from an estimated $322 million in 1990 to $160 mil-
lion in 1991 and none in 1992.
In analyzing the growth and nature of bilateral and multilateral exchanges,
there is one trend that is quite clear in both cases. Both NGOs and Western
countries began by offering Vietnam training in economic planning, finance,
monetary and fiscal policy, macro- and micro-economics, and management
skills, while Vietnam continued to train its scientists, technicians, and doctors
in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc states. Since the collapse of the Soviet
Union, however, Vietnam has begun to stress increasing scientific and techni-
cal links with the West. But as Vietnam is dependent on external assistance,
it is constrained by donors' values and offerings. As yet, there has been very
little external assistance in science education and technical training because
Western governments are more concerned with reforming Vietnam's econ-
omy than improving its science and technology base. Most funding for over-
seas educational exchanges goes to bringing economic planners, bureaucrats,
and decision-makers to the West.

Doi Moi and Educational Exchanges:

The Party Debates
Although doi moi was adopted at the Sixth Party Congress in 1986, renova-
tion of education did not address educational exchanges until 1988. In the
universities, doi moi primarily addressed the state's ending of job placement
for all graduates, reorganization of the undergraduate system, merger of re-
search institutes with universities, and the democratization of university ad-
ministrations.5 During this period, educational exchanges and cooperation
with the former Soviet Union and Eastern bloc states continued as before.
The first major "decision" came in 1989 when the leadership allowed stu-
dents to study in the West under private auspices, although no official docu-
ment was ever issued nor a well-defined policy ever elaborated. It is
interesting that the state relinquished its monopoly at such an early point, as
was a decision that took China six years to make.6 Since 1989 students have

4. Ministry of Education and Training (MET) Report to the Sectoral Aid Coordination Meet-
ing on Education (Hanoi: MET, 1995), pp. 6-7.
5. Le Thac Can, "Higher Education Reform in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia," Comparative
Education Review, no. 35 (Fall 1991), pp. 171-72.
6. Interviewee B, Medford, Mass., 1 December 1993. Although the Chinese government first
allowed students to go abroad at their own expense as early as 1981, restrictions on the policy
were imposed in 1982. It was not until late 1984 that all restrictions were removed. See Du
Ruiqing, Chinese Higher Education: A Decade of Reform and Development (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1992), pp. 96-97.

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 ZACHARY ABUZA 621

been permitted to go abroad to France, Canada, Australia, and other countries

under private auspices. In the period 1992-95, 2,300 students pursued self-
funded education in 22 countries.7
The second "decision" was Vietnam's attempt to join the Southeast Asian
Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) in the summer of 1990.
Although this did not happen until October 1991, exchanges were discussed;
with membership in ASEAN, more exchanges and training programs are ex-
pected.
The third "decision" was actually a reversal of policy; a reaction to the
major social and political upheavals in Eastern Europe and the USSR. The
Vietnamese leadership became alarmed at the events in Eastern Europe and
the Tiananmen incident in China and, as a result, "slowed the pace of aca-
demic exchanges with the West to reduce the chance of thousands of intellec-
tuals and students rising up to demand democracy as they did in China." As
one student who recently returned from overseas noted: "They're nervous
about us going abroad. They think we'll come back with too many Western
political ideas."8 A major academic conference with the West scheduled for
early 1990 was also postponed for six months.

In August 1989, Vietnam Communist Party (VCP) conservatives launched

a campaign against political pluralism and bourgeois liberalism, and the fol-
lowing January the government suspended all ideological, party-to-party, and
educational exchanges in the social sciences. In February 1990 the Ministry
of Education and Training (MET) issued a communique on overseas study
and training programs for scientific cadres and technical workers, which
although noting the contribution of overseas training, was highly politicized
and explicitly criticized those who had studied abroad.

In light of new requirements for the current renovation, the training and fostering
of scientific cadres and technical workers abroad have experienced numerous
shortcomings and weaknesses. These include low training quality and the formu-
lation of irrational occupation structures that are inconsistent with [the] require-
ments for our country's socioeconomic development program. The overseas
training programs must be adjusted to meet new requirements in our country and
overcome ordeals caused by politico-socioeconomic situations in foreign coun-
tries.9

7. Vietnam News Agency (VNA), Daily Briefing (DB), 2 July 1995, pp. 7-8. As of 1995,
over 1,000 self-funded students had gone to Australia alone. "Australia Attracts Most Self-
Funded Students," Vietnam News, 9 September 1995, p. 4.

8. Murray Hiebert, "Against the Tide," Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), 14 September
1989, p. 29.

9. Hanoi Radio Domestic Service (HDS), 27 February 1990, in Foreign Broadcast Informa-
tion Service, Daily Report, East Asia (hereafter FBIS, DR/EAS), 2 March 1990, p. 70.

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 622 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXVI, NO. 6, JUNE 1996

The 7th plenum of the VCPs Central Committee met in August 1990 to
codify this policy. The government announced that no students would be
sent abroad for schooling during the upcoming school year due to the col-
lapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union's inability to fund
the exchanges: "Due to the major political and socioeconomic changes, we
have thus far not obtained enough information to determine the capacity and
scale of training cooperation with these [Eastern European] countries."10 As
a direct result of the upheavals in the "socialist camp," the number of stu-
dents and technical workers sent abroad for training fell from 4,188 in the
1986-87 academic year to 1,945 in 1989-90. This was an extreme decision,
one made out of great political consternation, that had serious social reper-
cussions. For example, most of Vietnam's doctors had been trained in the
USSR. Interestingly, the ban did not apply to the slowly growing number of
students sent to Western institutions. The leadership clearly considered the
impact of the collapse of communist parties on its students a greater danger
than the bourgeois "spiritual pollution" they might acquire from the West.
The conservative backlash ebbed in early 1991, and the reformers gradu-
ally regained power. The prime minister and VCP general secretary visited
Moscow in April and May, respectively, where it became evident that the
Soviet Union was going to suspend all aid and trading privileges. This pro-
vided an impetus to further the reform process, and as a result, the Seventh
Congress in July 1991 was seen by many as a victory for the reformers as a
"market mechanism economy" was adopted and most of the old guard were
removed from the top echelons of the Party and the State apparatii.11 In
September 1991 the MET issued a "Circular on Overseas Student Training"
that was the Ministry's first attempt to institutionalize the rules and regula-
tions governing study overseas.'2 The circular set forth the norms schools
and institutes needed to meet selection requirements for sending students
abroad. It also set forth the state's justification for limiting the number of
students going abroad:

At present, the sending of students for further education abroad depends com-
pletely on the number of scholarships reserved for us by various foreign govern-
ments and international organizations. This number of scholarships is usually
small and, at times, is characteristically not in accordance with branches or fields
of study that have been fixed by our side.... Therefore, in the years ahead, the
selection of students for studying abroad can only be carried out on an irregular
basis.

10. HDS, 21 August 1990, in FBIS, DRIEAS, 23 August 1990, p. 53.

11. See Douglas Pike, "Vietnam in 1991: The Turning Point," Asian Survey, January 1992,
pp. 74-81.
12. Voice of Vietnam (VOV), 13 September 1991, in FBIS, DRIEAS, 17 September 1991, p.
64.

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 ZACHARY ABUZA 623

The document clearly illustrates the center's intention to maintain administra-

tive and decision-making control over who can go abroad and what can be
studied. A note to the circular emphasizes that overseas study will be al-
lowed only if it falls within the bounds of certain necessary "training fields,"
including for students who go abroad independently. More significantly, the
document rejects the use of "political biographies" as a determining factor:
"The selection of students for studying abroad . .. is aimed at ensuring these
scholarships for students with high points in their entrance exams to various
colleges or for those who are doing well at certain colleges." This is indica-
tive of the leadership's cognizance of the need to de-politicize the educational
system in order to foster economic development.
The National Assembly amended the Constitution in April 1992 to address
the current socioeconomic developments. Among the many changes was the
inclusion of Article 43 that directly states the government's policy on educa-
tional exchanges: "The state shall expand its international exchanges and
cooperation in various fields-cultural, information, literary, artistic, scien-
tific, technological, educational, health, physical education, and sports."
Although a very broad and noncommittal statement, it was important because
it indicated the National Assembly's interest in doi moi and its recognition
that Vietnam needed to increase its educational links with the West.
The next directive on overseas study in July 1992 reopened channels for
educational exchanges; Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet issued a communique
setting three conditions under which students could go abroad:

* under a former agreement between Vietnam and another government or an in-

ternational organization;
* under a former agreement between a branch, locality, or social, cultural, or
economic organization; a research or training center in Vietnam and its counter-
part/equivalent in another country;
* under the direct sponsorship of a foreign scientist, institution, relative living
abroad, or any other scholarship.13

This directive further eroded the center's monopoly on educational ex-

changes. Aside from the government-to-government and government-to-
NGO exchanges, the center now allowed direct provincial, university, and
institutional links to be established. Reflecting financial constraints, the di-
rective stated that the government "shall fund only the studies of university
students and post-graduates [in fields] where highly qualified personnel are
required. Moreover, the directive reiterated the government's support of pri-
vate exchanges as long as they were externally funded.

13. VNA, 31 July 1992, in ibid., 3 August 1992, pp. 55-56, and VOV, 30 July 1992, in ibid.,
11 August 1992, p. 42.

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 624 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXVI, NO. 6, JUNE 1996

Although the public document revealed no such indication, the prime min-
ister reportedly wanted his office to have sole authority over who could go
abroad to study. The nominal reason was that he would be better able to
utilize those who studied abroad if his office could decide who went, what
they studied, and what position they would return to. But several sources
claimed that Vo Van Kiet wanted to use his monopoly over educational ex-
changes to increase his political base. By controlling the sole channel, he
could ensure that only his allies and proteges went abroad. Most likely, the
MET bureaucrats, with the support of party conservatives and regional lead-
ers, resisted the prime minister's attempted usurpation of their control.
The most recent directive came in the fall of 1993 when Minister of Educa-
tion Tran Hong Quan announced that: "The renovation of college education
aims to provide the country with a work force with an educational standard
higher than at present and compatible with the Open Door policy in Viet-
nam."14 Quan further stated that the "curricula must keep as closely as possi-
ble to the science and technology advances and the needs of the socialist-
oriented market economy." In all, the minister's statements indicate a tacit
acceptance by the state that educational exchanges with the West should not
only be continued, but expanded.

U.S.-Vietnamese Bilateral Exchanges:

Educational Diplomacy
Post-1975 educational exchanges with the United States began in 1990 when
the government lifted the phase two restrictions of "The U.S. 'Road Map' Pro-
posal for Normalization with Vietnam," which first allowed American NGOs
to operate in Vietnam. Why did exchanges begin, and what is perhaps more
important, why has the Fulbright program in Vietnam become the largest
Fulbright program in Asia in just a few years? As the path to full diplomatic
relations moved slowly forward, both countries saw educational exchange as
a political facilitator. For the U.S., it was a way of maintaining contact and
also a mechanism to get to know the Vietnamese educational community; it
was hoped that exchanges would lead to reciprocity and opportunities for
American scholars. The opening of archives to Americans and the ability to
do research and field work in Vietnam could help to rectify the dearth of
academic literature on Vietnam. Though one could argue that perhaps it is
simply guilt intermeshed with traditional American notions of mission civi-
lize, the answer may be closer to America's rationale for hosting such a large
number of Chinese students: the prospect that the U.S. will be training, and
therefore influencing the next generations of leadership. For the Vietnamese
government, in addition to exchanges serving as a quasi-official channel to

14. VNA, 4 September 1993, in ibid., 7 September 1993, p. 57.

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 ZACHARY ABUZA 625

the U.S., there was simply the need for the training the U.S. could provide to
Vietnam's officials. Thus, once the decision to allow exchanges with the
U.S. was made, the key issue became which ministry would control them.

The Fulbright Fellowships

Of the different levels of exchanges between the United States and Vietnam,
the first is the Fulbright program, the second is NGO-sponsored exchanges,
and the third and least developed is university-to-university programs. The
Fulbright program is the most important simply because it is a U.S. govern-
ment-funded activity in a politically sensitive area. As a U.S. Information
Agency (USIA) program officer said: "It [the Fulbright legislation regarding
Vietnam] [was] a sign to the Administration that Congress will do something
with Vietnam even if the Administration doesn't."15
In the first year of the Fulbright program, the U.S. Congress appropriated
$1 million to the USIA, which provided fellowships for 16 students in the
academic year 1991-92. Although the exchanges used Fulbright funding,
they were conducted on an ad hoc basis by private organizations and not
through normal Fulbright channels.16 The American Committee of Learned
Societies (ACLS), the executor of Fulbright programs, did not become in-
volved in the exchanges until the next academic year. In 1992-93, there
were 26 Vietnamese Fulbright fellows, and each year since the number has
been over 30 with an annual budget of $3 million, making Vietnam's the
largest Fulbright program in Asia. It is, however, subject to congressional
whim, and administrators at all levels of the program stressed that the number
of exchanges is constrained solely by the amount of funding that Congress
appropriates.
As Congress has not mandated reciprocal educational exchanges with Viet-
nam, the ACLS does not disburse the funding through its subsidiary, the
Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), but rather subcon-
tracts the program to the Institute of International Education (IIE), which in
turn subcontracts the overseas portion-that is, all of the initial screening and
testing of prospective students in Vietnam-to the Harvard Institute of Inter-
national Development (HIID).17 HIID's counterpart agency is, surprisingly,
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), though it still has to work with the
MET. According to a Vietnamese student currently in the United States,
there is great animosity between the MET and MFA over the Fulbright pro-

15. Telephone interview with Wayne Peterson, USIA, 24 November 1993.

16. Telephone interview with Steven Whetley, American Council of Learned Societies
(ACLS), 24 November 1993.
17. CIES handles the Fulbright program only if it also involves sending American scholars
and educators abroad. Because the CIES is the executor of all overseas Fulbright programs, this
would make it the natural executing agency and not the IIE.

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 626 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXVI, NO. 6, JUNE 1996

gram. On the American side, HIID became fed up with the MET because it
constantly proposed well-connected but below-par students. The MET's nep-
otism, corruption, and incompetence led the ACLS and the HIID to insist on
working solely with the MFA.
On the Vietnamese side, the MFA argued that because of the political and
diplomatic sensitivity of Fulbright exchanges, the MFA was better able to
handle the program and was far more accommodating. Clearly, not all gov-
ernment officials and offices were bold enough to engage themselves actively
in a working relationship with an American agency, especially in the MET, a
guardian of Marxist-Leninist-Ho Chi Minh thought whose purpose was to
educate a socialist work force. Although it may eventually stand to gain,
there has always been a large degree of ideological resistance to establishing
relations with the United States. The MFA's job on the other hand, is to
build working relationships with foreign counterparts, and as an institution, it
has a lot more to gain from working and cooperating with the outside. More-
over, because of the mandated course requirements of the Fulbright program,
the MFA saw an opportunity to send many of its officials abroad. Indeed, in
four years of existence, there were more MFA Fulbright fellows than any
other ministry.
Despite the need for counterpart organizations, students are nominated by
their respective institutes and work places and screened by a panel of ACLS
and HIID members. Neither the MFA nor MET have any say in the selection
process; once the ACLS has made a final decision, it applies for the student
to different institutions that correspond with his/her area of expertise. The
Fulbright legislation clearly reflects the U.S. government's policy objectives,
as fellowships are only offered in the disciplines of economics, international
law, and human rights. It is broadly interpreted to also include business ad-
ministration, management, and international relations. The program also
targets government officials and decision-makers in order to expose them to
Western politics and economics. This has been welcomed by Hanoi, as any
field relating to economic development is in accordance with Vietnam's de-
velopment agenda. The senior administrator of the ACLS program stated
that "the SRV has been extremely enthusiastic about the exchange program.
They have been extremely cooperative because the government wants train-
ing [for its officials]." But more important, Hanoi knows that the Fulbright is
a U.S. government-funded exchange program and sees it as a way of increas-
ing links with Washington, which explains the MFA's usurpation of the pro-
gram.

NGO and University Exchanges

The second level of exchanges is at the nongovernmental organization
(NGO) level. The largest program in this category is that of the U.S. Com-

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 ZACHARY ABUZA 627

mittee for Scientific Cooperation with the SRV (CSC), though other NGOs
such as the Ford Foundation have also established educational exchange. In
the 1993-94 academic year, the CSC sponsored 66 Vietnamese students for
study in America and Canadian universities. The CSC program is quite dif-
ferent from the Fulbright program in that it does not give fellowships or
scholarships. It does pay the full cost of the TOEFL (test of English as a
foreign language) exam to "make the system more equitable,'"8 as it other
wise would be too biased in favor of urban elites-namely, the bureaucrats
themselves. According to the director of the program, this was resisted by
the MET precisely because it diminished their "comparative advantage." The
CSC's counterpart agency is the MET for the TOEFL exam, though the cli-
rector indicated that the CSC had many bilateral relations and tries to work
directly with the institutes and universities where the exams are given.
Like the ACLS, the CSC applies to different universities on behalf of the
selected students. Again, the number of selected students who finally attend
U.S. and Canadian universities is limited only by funding, which comes
solely from foundation grants and the fellowships and scholarships extended
by the universities. The numbers therefore vary, as do the areas in which the
fellowships are offered. Nonetheless, the CSC program does broaden the
scope of the exchanges as it encompasses many disciplines, especially the
sciences. Unlike the Fulbright program, which is solely for the study of eco-
nomic development and targets members of the bureaucracy and other gov-
ernment officials, the CSC program focuses on scientists and educators.
The third type of exchanges involves direct university ties. One of the first
such programs was jointly initiated by the State University of New York
(SUNY) at Buffalo and the U.S.-Indochina Reconciliation Project in 1992.
Under it, $40,000 in scholarships was extended for English-as-a-second-lan-
guage (ESL) teacher training at SUNY Buffalo. More recently, the Univer-
sity of Arizona's College of Medicine and Hanoi Medical College began an
exchange program for staff, students, equipment, and data. One of the oldest
programs is run by the Harvard-Yenching Institute (HYI); it currently offers
two different fellowship programs to Vietnam: the Visiting Scholars Pro-
gram and the Doctoral Scholarship Program, which support doctoral and
post-doctoral research at American universities. Officials from these direct
programs encountered much less bureaucratic interference on the Vietnamese
side, as they tended to work directly with the recipient institutions and
avoided counterpart agencies.

18. Telephone interview with Judith L. Ladinski, U.S. Committee for Scientific Cooperation
with Vietnam, 2 December 1993. The TOEFL exam is now administered twice annually in three
cities: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh city, and Hue.

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 628 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXVI, NO. 6, JUNE 1996

Although the three types of exchange programs differ in scope, size, and
target group, there are similarities. First, all exchanges involve only gradu-
ate-level students. Neither the United States nor Vietnam wanted to begin
undergraduate exchanges until diplomatic relations were established, and
even now there are no concrete proposals. Hanoi also feels that the students
can better help national development if they receive foreign training at the
graduate level. Another concern shared by both sides is that undergraduates
will be more inclined to try to remain in the U.S., while graduate-level stu-
dents with more attachments in Vietnam-a family and a job to return to-
are more likely to return. Nonetheless, the U.S. will not issue visas for
spouses of Vietnamese scholars studying in the United States.
Non-returning students may seem like a non-issue as there are so few
Vietnamese students currently in the United States, but both governments
treat the matter very seriously for two reasons. First, neither government
wants the issue of asylum-seeking students to crimp the nascent bilateral rela-
tionship. Second, Hanoi fears a "brain drain" of its next generation of civil
servants, technocrats, and managers. The Vietnamese have seen the problem
China faces in trying to get its graduates to return upon completion of their
studies. The problem for Vietnam could be even more acute as it has a
smaller pool of people with foreign training, and its development needs are so
pressing that it cannot afford to have its students remain abroad. Undergrad-
uates are able to come to the United States if they are privately funded. The
obvious obstacle here is money; formerly it was the difficulty of obtaining an
American visa but this is no longer a problem.
Another similarity among the exchange programs is that although each has
a counterpart organization, the Vietnamese system is far less centralized than
one would imagine, and most program officers stressed that although they
had an official counterpart agency they often worked directly with the recipi-
ent organization or institution. A third similarity is that the administrators of
the programs at all levels indicated a high degree of cooperation and enthusi-
asm on the part of the Vietnamese they work with. Although both HIID and
CSC have had problems with the MET, officials in both said they felt the
MET is becoming more cooperative and clearly more accustomed to working
with Western institutions and breaking out of its path-dependency. Despite
the fact that other countries, such as Australia, may provide more scholar-
ships, Hanoi considers exchanges with the United States the most impor-
tant,19 as they are highly political and seen as a way to further increase ties
with Washington.

19. Interviewee C, Medford, Mass., 29 November 1993. Since 1992, Australia has provided
357 scholarships to Vietnamese students.

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 ZACHARY ABUZA 629

Finally, in all three types of educational exchanges, the U.S. host or coun-
terpart agency pays the costs for the Vietnamese students. Hanoi pays for
very few of its educational exchanges, although this is beginning to change:
in 1995 the government announced that it plans to spend 9 to 14 million
dollars to send 500 to 700 students abroad to focus on science and technol-
ogy, information processing, engineering, economics, and planning.20

Issues and Implications

Vietnamese educational exchanges, and particularly those with the United
States, are expected to continue and gradually expand as Vietnam continues
its modernization program. The exchanges with the United States, however,
will never approach the proportions of China's, as there is neither a colonial
legacy, educational and philanthropic ties, nor does the U.S. "need" Vietnam
as it does China. U.S.-Vietnamese rapprochement emerged due to economic
and not political or geostrategic considerations. Finally, there are clear limi-
tations of resources.
Having noted the emergence of some aspects of the exchange apparatus, it
is clear that it is small and undeveloped on both sides. Vietnam has no or-
ganization like the Chinese State Education Commission, which draws up
plans and quotas for sending students abroad. On the American side, there is
no organization like the CSC for China, which has the backing of the Na-
tional Academy of Sciences, giving it a large voice in the exchange process.
The net result of the lack of organization and current dearth of American
philanthropic organizations that target Vietnam is minimal funding. Every
organization that I spoke to reiterated that their only constraints in bringing
students to the U.S. are financial.
Moreover, following the signing of the Sino-American educational ex-
change agreement in October 1978, American universities were encouraged
"both to develop their own bilateral ties directly with Chinese academic insti-
tutions and to enter into exchange agreements with them."'2' As yet, the few
universities that have begun to establish links with Vietnamese institutions
have done so on their own initiative. There seems to be little or no official
encouragement. Nonetheless, the Vietnamese government will seek to ex-
pand the exchange program with the West. Outlining a program for higher
education reform in August 1993, the MET Minister Quan announced that
nearly 2,200 students were enrolled in courses abroad during the 1992-93
academic year, and indicated that educational exchanges would continue to

20. VNA, Daily Briefing, 2 July 1995, pp. 7-8.

21. Patrick G. Maddox and Anne F. Thurston, "Academic Exchanges: The Goals and Roles
of U.S. Universities," in Joyce Kallgren and Dennis F. Simon, eds., Educational Exchanges
(Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987), p. 123.

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 630 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXVI. NO. 6. JUNE 1996

play a large part in national development.22 There are, however, a number of

possibilities that may alter that course.
While normalization of diplomatic relations should mean an enormous in-
flux of Vietnamese students, both graduates and undergraduates, this is un-
likely because the Vietnamese will be competing for a diminishing pool of
U.S. government, university, and institutional funding. There will be, how-
ever, more opportunities for U.S. scholars to go to Vietnam. The second
possibility is that educational ties become strained because of a "brain drain."
As of now, it is too early to tell if this will be a problem as it is with China;
there have only been four classes of Fulbright and CSC fellows. Although
many master's degree candidates want to stay and complete their doctorates,
most administrators seem to feel that the Vietnamese will return.
The third possibility is that overseas study results in "contamination" by
Western political culture and democracy. The 1983 Anti-Bourgeois Cam-
paign in China took place soon after the first groups of students returned from
the West. This is very alarming to conservative members of the VCP leader-
ship, as students have already begun to cause trouble in Vietnam. The Far
Eastern Economic Review reported in July 1989 that students in Ho Chi Minh
city had "already staged teach-ins to voice their complaints about the curricu-
lum, student recruitment, and the standard of living."23 That year, the minis-
ter of education met with student representatives to address these issues; as a
result, the curriculum was changed to address the current socioeconomic situ-
ation rather than the conditions under a Marxist-Leninist state, and the use of
a student's "political biography" was dropped as a criterion for university
admission. David Marr notes that:

Students have become an increasingly volatile element. They openly criticized the
examination system, procedures for awarding scholarships, living conditions, mili-
tary service, Marxist-Leninist classes. They paid more attention to world affairs
and politics, followed events in Eastern Europe and the USSR, and expressed skep-
ticism about the firmness of Doi Moi and the future of socialism.24

The party is losing control of students and the academic community in

general, especially in day-to-day affairs. There are now alternative channels
and means of upward mobility, limiting the state's control over intellectuals.
Ideological and political intransigence will only increase as more students
study the West and are exposed to Western values and political culture. The
VCP leadership is aware of this, more urgently since the Tiananmen debacle,
an event on which the VCP withheld official comment. The VCP will not

22. VNA, September 1993, in FBIS, DRIEAS, 9 September 1993, pp. 56-57.
23. Murray Hiebert, "Mind Over Marx," FEER, 20 July 1989, p. 36.
24. David Marr, "Education, Research, and Information Circulation in Contemporary Viet-
nam," p. 340.

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 ZACHARY ABUZA 631

willingly give up its monopoly of power. If students, especially those who

have been abroad, begin to challenge the party, channels to Western educa-
tional institutions can be expected to close.
The final problem that Vietnam may encounter is that it will not be able to
use the returned students effectively. One student I talked to said that Viet-
nam, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, sent students to Russia and Eastern
Europe "without a plan." Scientists who were arbitrarily sent to study in the
Soviet Union had no new place or position to fill upon return. He indicated
they were "not used productively"25; they could not implement their newly
acquired skills upon their return. This has continued. Because of the decen-
tralized nature of educational exchanges, students are still being sent abroad
for study without a plan for their return. The issues of who goes, what they
study, how they will be used, are all left unaddressed.
Underemployment, especially of students returning to the public sector,
may cause a desertion to the rapidly growing private sector. Many students
indicate that they are considering entering the private sector upon their return,
a matter of real concern to the government bureaucracies. The Ministry of
Foreign Affairs supposedly issued an internal regulation that prohibits re-
turned students from leaving the MFA. The document is ambiguous as it
does not elaborate a time frame, and may be hard to enforce as the MFA
itself has not sponsored any students to go abroad. Regardless, foreign-
trained economists and managers who have good government connections
will be a highly valued commodity as more foreign corporations move into
Vietnam. There is also a corresponding drain of scientists and technicians to
the private sector now that the economic reforms are starting to create a com-
mercial demand for scientific research.
The most effective way to counter the loss to the private sector would be to
create an effective policy on returned students: ensure good utilization, let
promotions and salaries reflect what the individual can now contribute to
national development, give a choice of jobs, allow more professional and
academic freedom in writing and research, allow returnees to maintain links
to foreign institutes and universities, and allow them to go abroad again. Ob-
stacles to research, such as bureaucratic hinderance, lack of information, and
lack of funding must also be overcome. Promotions are essential, especially
in academia, where a higher rank gives access to increased funding for re-
search.

25. Interviewee B, Medford, Mass., 23 November 1993. Ruth Hayhoe notes that the Chinese
Academy of Sciences, the State Education Commission, and individual institutions and universi-
ties are given quotas. This would suggest that students are sent abroad in accordance with a
more defined plan. Hayhoe, China's Universities and the Open Door (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe,
1989), p. 54.

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