THE RESPONSES OF VIETNAMESE PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES TO THE AUTONOMY POLICY

Abstract

This thesis examines how and for what reasons different public universities in Vietnam have reacted to their participation in the autonomy pilot programme. Many studies have explored the impact of autonomy policies on organisational changes and developments in both developed and developing countries. However, there is limited understanding of how this takes place in a socialist developing country. This research attempts to address this gap by investigating the diversity among public universities in Vietnam before autonomy and exploring how this has changed after they participated in the autonomy pilot programme. Moreover, the study explores how the autonomy pilot programme has affected these universities. The study adopts a qualitative, comparative case study approach to analyse three univeristies which have been participating in the programme. The cases were selected by using a typology developed especially for the study. In-depth semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data and in addition institutional documents were examined. The retroduction method was used to analyse and interpret the data. The study contributes to the conceptual literature in two ways. First, the interaction between institutional autonomy and communist ideology at the institutional level is clarified. The clash between the nature of institutional autonomy and the centrally-planned aspect of the communist regime has considerably limited its influence, making it slow and difficult to move away from the state-controlling model. Second, institutional autonomy has increased the level of diversity among Vietnamese public universities.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Maria Nedeva (Supervisor) & Jakob Edler (Supervisor)