Research capacity-building in Vietnam's post-socialist higher education : the cases of three public universities in Ho Chi Minh City

Abstract

In the process of seeking opportunities to enhance their research competitiveness, many Vietnamese universities seemed to realise that their academic members had poor competencies to conduct high quality research. This issue would be considered at the national, institutional and individual levels; however, faculty members’ research expertise was still underdeveloped. The problem of competitive disadvantages prevailed in the context of Vietnam’s post-socialist higher education system when research capacity-building seemed to be misaligned across the national, institutional and individual levels. Furthermore, there seemed to be few studies exploring the mechanism behind research capacity-building or any feasible solutions to overcome the misaligned problems and enhance faculty members’ academic expertise in Vietnam or any other similar contexts. Hence, this study aimed at examining the mechanism of and solutions for academics’ research capacity-building at the national, institutional and individual levels. The study engaged the theory of cumulative (dis)advantages to explore how the mechanism of enhancing faculty members’ academic competence would be built across the national, institutional and individual levels. The two principles of research capacity-building had been identified as the reciprocal causal relationship and the cumulability of (dis)advantages. What seemed to be more important would be the concept of countervailing forces for breaking the chains of disavdantages and enhancing the cumulability of advantages at the three levels. Five factors constituting to the mechanism of cumulative (dis)advantages and countervailing forces would be initially identified as perception, interest, norm, commitment and instrumentality, and they would form the tentative theoretical framework. To further explore academics’ research capacity-building in a post-socialist context, and test and develop the proposed theoretical framework, this study conducted qualitative analysis of the cumulative (dis)advantages and countervailing forces across the three levels within an interpretivist paradigm. Three flagship public mono-disciplinary universities (in natural, medical and social sciences) in Ho Chi Minh City were used as instrumental case studies. Data were obtained from documentation, direct observation, and semi-structured interviews with top professors, academics and educational managers. The thematic method with code-based and case-based approaches, and network and framework techniques was adopted to analyse the data. Regarding the assurance of this study’s robustness, several measures were applied to reduce the risks caused by the closed context, such as member checking, positionality, reflexivity and strategies to solve the ethical conflicts. The research results revealed the six factors, namely academic culture, perceptions, interests, norms, commitment and instrumentality, which would influence the mechanism of cumulative (dis)advantages and countervailing forces at the national, institutional and individual levels. Based on the analysis of the six factors, Vietnam’s academic system seemed to embrace both advantages and disadvantages to faculty members’ research capacity-building. Several first efforts seemed to be made and evident via the promotion of sounder academic practices, better perceptions of and more interests in research and academics’ research capacity-building, shifting norms, and more commitment and instrumentalities at the three levels. These initial attempts might be considered as the first dimension of the proposed concept of “an emerging research environment.” Nevertheless, these efforts may be still restricted by the persistent disadvantages in the system. The government seemed to maintain a centralised totalitarian system with an unhealthy academic culture. At the institutional level, the existence of unsound cultural practices and misconducts, incomprehensive perceptions, political ambitions, half-hearted commitment and ineffective instrumentality seemed to foster the centralised teaching-only model. Academics seemed to be segregated into three prominent groups, namely the progressive, the conservative and the apathetic. The three groups seemed to have certain conflicts, which would only enhance the cumulability of disadvantages and the traits of “teaching academics.” The (mis)alignments across the three levels in terms of cumulative (dis)advantages would be considered as the second dimension of the proposed concept of “an emerging research environment.” So as to effectively enhance academics’ research capacity, countervailing forces would be needed for the government, universities and faculty members to brake the chains of disadvantages and accumulate more advantages. The government might need to employ countervailing forces, such as establishing a sounder academic culture with transparency, research ethics and integrity, nurturing scientific aspirations, adopting faciliting norms, to transit into a decentralised shared-governance system. Countervailing forces at the institutional level, such as nurturing scientific aspirations, adopting an autonomous facilitating norm, and having strong commitment, might assist universities to transit into an autonomous research-oriented institution. At the individual level, faculty members would need to cultivate research ethics and integrity, have comprehensive perceptions of research, research values and research capacity, nurture scientific aspirations, adopt an active independent collegiate reflexive norm, and foster strong commitment with self-effort. Accordingly, academic members would be able to transform into “research academics.” The fluid transitions at the three levels thanks to countervailing forces would be considered as the third dimension of the proposed concept of “an emerging research environment.”