Vietnam's half-hearted welcome home [to academics] article
From: Daniel C. Tsang <dtsang@uci.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 5:39 PM
FYI, I thought the salary for academics had gone up. Maybe in management studies mostly?
This article, "Vietnam's Half-Hearted Welcome Home" is
available online at this address:
http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=6zRhMBhnHhtdpSjW8kzmnhzBrmXbmdpj
This article will be available to non-subscribers of The
Chronicle for up to five days after it is e-mailed.
The article is always available to Chronicle subscribers at this
address:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i33/33a00101.htm
dan
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From: Jim Cobbe <jcobbe@fsu.edu>
Reply-To: jcobbe@fsu.edu, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 7:25 PM
Their base salary is still the appropriate civil servant salary, which typically is about $100 a month for most academic staff. However, Universities are free to supplement that from their own resources under the new budget law, and the cleverer ones do that for most, perhaps doubling the take-home pay for many. There are also various allowances one can receive for things like being a leader of a group, manager of a program, and so on [which are not taxable, although they are also not pensionable]. However, the vast majority of academics still teach far too many hours, or do outside jobs, because 'standard load' is defined in terms of hours taught, with additional pay available for overloads, and in most cities even a supplemented base salary is just too little to support even a modest middle-class life style.
I was quoted in the article, and just for the record I was not making that statement about Đại Học Kinh Tế Đà Nẵng, which is a relatively very progressive institution which uses most of its staff returned from overseas study very appropriately within the constraints of the system; I was talking about overseas graduates I have spoken to from other institutions, mostly in other parts of the country.
Jim Cobbe
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From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 9:52 PM
Dear list,
It may interest readers of this list that there was a devastating report on Vietnamese higher education, written by Vietnamese, that was summarized in an article in Tuoi Tre about two weeks ago. When I say "devastating," I mean it -- the report called Vietnamese higher education "backwards" and "failing." It called on the government to stop allowing new universities to open, so that it could focus on bettering the ones that exist. And there are other indications of serious systemic problems, such as the poor quality of engineering education, the extremely low research productivity in some fields, and so on.
I have been struck in my eight months here that the government seems to like to invest in tangible things -- especially buildings! But what about investment in training? What about giving more autonomy to universities? What about investing monies for creating a research culture? I have been someone taken aback, for example, to find NO Vietnamese historians from Vietnam working in Archives-II here in the past eight months. None. No undergraduate students sent to the archives for a research project. No graduate students either.
The "half-hearted welcome" discussed in the article, then, is only part of a larger malaise. This larger dissatisfaction has given rise to a variety of proposals, including one for the creation of completely new "international standards" universities. (Frankly, I don't know what is meant by "international standards" universities -- the idea sounds good in the abstract, but the devil is in the details.)
At the same time, I wonder if generalizations about this half-hearted welcome should be avoided. Some disciplines are stagnating. Others are not. Some centers do well, others not (I like the center I am affiliated with, for example.) I suspect that there are particular schools, or particular departments, which integrate returning MAs or PhDs quite well. Others don't. But this is no longer just a "Vietnamese" issue. To be blunt, why should any country offer fellowships to students from Vietnam to go abroad if they will end up running hotels? It is a wasted investment, and I think the government is becoming aware of that fact.
Shawn McHale
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
(on leave, 2007-08, at Vietnam National University --
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)
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From: quang phu van <quang.van@yale.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 8:49 AM
Hi Shawn,
Thanks for the comments and insightful remarks. Right after reading your message, a colleague here at Yale gave me a copy of an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on higher education in VN: "
Vietnam's Half-Hearted Welcome Homescholars return to find universities resist their ideas or pay too little"
( http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i33/33a00101.htm0
Best regards,
Quang
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From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 4:15 AM
Quang,
Thanks for the e-mail. Yes, there is lots to worry about in terms of higher education in Vietnam. Ironically, I think two things have really caught the government's attention -- and these two things aren't the complaints that professors and students have made for years about universities. The first thing is Vietnam's low ranking in international rankings of universities. Personally, I think such rankings are mostly hogwash -- do we really have enough data, and comparable data, to make statements about where Vietnamese universities are on a world scale? But the very low rankings have caught the attention, I think, of the government. The second thing that has the government worried was the awful showing of engineering graduates when Intel gave them exams on basic engineering knowledge. Intel has committed to Vietnam, and I suspect that it thinks that it committed too soon.
Personally, and I am sure you will agree with this -- what makes a great university is not the buildings. It is its academic culture. I'm not sure that the government really understands that. Let me give an example of how absurd things can be here. Two months ago, I stopped by the History Department -- I thought I'd make a social call on the Head of the Department, as I am affiliated with VNU-- Social Sciences and Humanities of HCMC. The year is, of course, 2008, the city is undergoing a great transformation, the government is full of talk about international cooperation blah blah blah. One would think I could just walk in a see the head of the History department. Well, no. I am told that I need to show some form of identifcation. I say: well, I am Shawn McHale, professor of History at Geoerge Washington University in the US, affiliated with a center at this university for this year. That's not enough --- a person wants to see identifcation. I say that I just want to talk (n
oi chuyen) with the head of the department, that's all, as a courtesy. Again -- the request for identifcation, and the suggestion that perhaps my sponsoring unit can write a LETTER to the head of the Department introducing me. At which point I start to get irritated. And then -- the can bo or whoever she is says the wrong thing. She says that she needs a letter because the department wants to make sure I am who I say I am.
At this point, I realize that I have just been called a potential liar. And, unfortunately perhaps, at this point I tell the woman behind the desk that she is "bất lịch sự," that this is no way to treat a guest, that if a university wants to promote collaboration with foreign scholars, this is no way to act. She gets quite embarrassed, tells me of course I can see the Head of the Department, etc. . And I later talk this over with my Center, which says that while technically the department might need a letter of introduction, of course it really isn't necessary.
Now, I know that Vietnam is different. I know that Party wants to keep track of who is seeing whom and so on. But there is so much potential here that gets squandered. (The students are certainly smart enough!) At bottom, what my story may suggest is this -- if the Party insists on keeping on the books silly little regulations, if it insists on limiting autonomy of universities so severely, how can it create great universities?
Anhhow, I have rambled :) Thanks for the link.
Shawn
Shawn McHale
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
(on leave, 2007-08, at Vietnam National University --
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 5:54 AM
To add to what Shawn said, when I was in HCMC recently, I talked to some colleagues at VNU. I was told that the most vibrant parts of the university are the khoa ngoai ngu and khoa Dong Phuong hoc. The latter is really a set of language courses with very very few courses about the history and culture of the countries of East Asia. Foreign languages are seen as means to earning good income. The losers are departments such as history, and even the new department of anthropology is not able to attract top-notch students.
I do think, though, that foreign scholars can help by giving talks. I gave three talks at VNU, all about how to apply for admission to North American universities and apply to funding. This was inspired by many years of reading uncompetitive applications from Vietnamese students. But we can try to introduce more scholarly topics as well. I would like to encourage graduate students to give talks on how they go about choosing a topic of research, drawing up a research prospectus, then doing their research. One of the things that are most lacking in Vietnamese applications is a literature review or even an inkling that the applicants is aware that there is a vast body of literature on topics they wish to study.
I plan on holding a workshop on biographies in Vietnam some time next year. This workshop will build on the one I am holding at Harvard May17-18. It is a way of contributing to the growth of social history and getting away from the dominant national narrative and encouraging Vietnamese to record their memories. I will try to leave most of the organizational details to local hosts, but will insist on a format similar to the one we are used to here, namely thematically organized panels with discussants and Q&A. A similarly organized conference at the Institute of Literature a couple of years ago was a revelation to participants and attendees.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Harvard
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From: Thomas Jandl <thjandl@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 6:48 AM
Dear Shawn (et al.),
I read your post with interest and a smile. We met last semester at the University for lunch with faculty. While this was a very stress-free meeting -- I had a friend set it up -- I cannot agree with you more.
I was interviewing provincial authorities about investment climate, and every one of them had the same drill: A letter of introduction. Done -- I have lots of government friends in high places in ha Noi. Another letter saying what I want. Done. Another letter with specific questions. All right. And just as I am ready to leave the office to get in the car to drive out to Binh Duong, a fax comes in: We need a copy of your passport!
My way of dealing with this is to ignore it. Nobody has ever not seen me because such a request was ignored. But since I had Vietnamese partners, they insisted -- things need to be done right. So it's back to the hotel, getthe passport, make a copy, fax it, then set off and be late.
But the funniest thing -- and I NEVER fail to point it out -- is that the first thing during an interview then is that they will invariably say that the greatest advantage of their province is that they have cut red tape and are so investor friendly ;)
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From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 8:21 AM
Is it possible that there is less freedom of academic thought in the social sciences, particularly history, than in other areas, and that this could affect the level of interest in these subjects at the universities?
- Steve Denney
library assistant, U.C. Berkeley
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 9:22 AM
I don't think that's the case. The people I talked to said students' choice was overwhelmingly money driven and I have no reason to doubt their interpretation (American students are also driven by job considerations, too; it's not just Vietnamese).
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
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From: charles waugh <cwaugh@cc.usu.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 9:46 AM
I wonder whether there is something about the institutional culture in HCMC that leads to this sort of bureaucracy? During my year at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU-Hanoi, I had no trouble meeting and working with faculty from departments other than my own, or even from other colleges in Hanoi. But when lecturing in HCMC, and trying to attend a conference there, I found a greater reluctance to do anything without official approval at several levels. Is there a greater degree of bureaucracy outside the capital? In the south? If so does it represent a lack of confidence to act autonomously, or an inability? Or is my experience atypical?
Charles
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From: Nora Taylor <nthanoi04@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 9:53 AM
I was going to respond to Shawn's email with a similar
story. During my time in Hanoi, affiliated with the
Vietnam Institute of CUlture and Information, I never
had any trouble walking in and out of the Insitute. I
was never asked for an ID. I also visited several
other institutions including the VME with no trouble
at all. I was teased by many of my friends that this
was simply another example of the advantages of being
a "nguoi Tay" that you can just walk in and out
without official permission. But, after reading
Charles' email, I wonder if perhaps, as he said, this
is a Hanoi versus HCMC issue.
Nora
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From: Hung Thai <Hung.Thai@pomona.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 10:01 AM
Dear Shawn and others,
Perhaps my status as a "Viet Kieu" makes things quiet different in dealing with all the little steps one has to go through to meet anyone of "status" in Vietnam, which I now find humorous. My thought, as a sociologist, and not a Viet Kieu, is that while the organizational culture in any state-run domain in Vietnam is very formalized--with a sturdy "principle of hierarchization"--there is A LOT of room for informalization, and it is this informalization that gets things done. Much of this informalization is based on an economy of gratitude, and on a culture of gift giving, even to people you have never met. I don’t mean to suggest bribes and corruption (though that's an entirely different topic). But I do think there is a lot of gift giving (which are always reciprocated) that takes place in order to get things done at the university setting. Academic culture in Vietnam is very different from academic culture in the US--or anywhere else. If I ever go to a place in the US and I wanted to meet some famous professor, I can do one of two things: I can email the professor before hand and ask for a meeting or I can simply look their office hours up on the internet and just show up. No one, I think, would think that's unacceptable in the US.
In Vietnam, when I want to or need to meet with a professor of "high status," I usually do one of two things. The first is that I send them a small gift beforehand, usually a book on a topic that I know they do research on or teach on (most often on what they teach since teaching is really what most professors at VNU do, unless they are part of institutes that are separate from the university); sometimes if I don't have a book, I simply go online and download a set of PDF articles from my library and print them out and send it to them. This normally, if they follow cultural logics, which they often do, results in them contacting me, because they now must reciprocate to a stranger who gave these gifts, at the least with a call (rarely a letter). They probably also contact me simply out of curiosity of who I am. From there, I always get a meeting, and in fact, eventually become friends [my friends in Vietnam on this list will know who they are and might laugh at this social history I am detailing].
The second thing I sometimes do--but rarely--is that I get an assistant of mine to contact their office, who then has to play phone tag with their assistant in order to get me a meeting. There is usually a lot of negotiating that goes on about the time to meet and the place to meet. In addition, there is often a lot from the other assistant that "the professor your professor wants to meet is very busy." Now, this gets complicated--and this sounds absurd--but when I find that if I agree with anytime they give me, it is often cancelled shortly after. BUT, if I initially also tell my assistant to relay the message that "Professor Thai is super busy, too," then a time is usually set and the meeting is followed up. I learned all of this from my wonderful assistant, Hanh Nguyen, who helped with my first book. I remember she telling me, "never agree to anytime they give you first." Why????????? She told me they want to know that you are someone "important," too, and a busy schedule somehow affirms that !!!!! Very absurd, especially when I learned that most of my faculty friends in HCMC have a lot of free time and do a lot of leisure things during the workday.
In short, I never apply my Western ideals of "dropping in," making social calls without advance planning, etc--things that I do in the US.
Hung
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 11:30 AM
I never just drop in, either in Vietnam or in the US. I find that in Vietnam, if I make an appointment to see someone of high status, a member of the staff will come and fetch me by taxi or car. So I certainly never have had to show an ID or letter of introduction! Asian visitors to Harvard are often bewildered by instructions to "take a taxi from Logan airport" on their own. I also find I have to swipe my ID card in order to get into the administrative building at Harvard, so perhaps we should not make too much of the "roadblocks" in Vietnam.
I don't bring gifts, except to old friends, but during my last visit to Hanoi, I was given 20 kgs worth of books, which I had to send by the post office; I got another 6-7 kgs of books in HCMC, only a few of which I bought myself. What I do have is the willingness to share scholarly information. About 20-25 students attended my talk on how to apply to North American colleges.
One big concern I have is continued ministerial control over the curriculum and over the content of exams. Anyone wanting to introduce new materials and pedagogy and teach new courses will have to deal with the fact that the new materials will not be on the all-important exams.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Harvard
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From: Margaret Bodemer <bodemer@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 12:20 PM
I’m reluctant to reply to the list because I always regret it and I also don’t want to embarrass anyone including myself. But anyway I wanted to thank Prof Tai for encouraging foreign scholars and graduate students to give talks to colleagues in VN. I agree that this is important, but I want to stress that it can be a two-way learning experience.
I gave a talk for my host institute after my year of research and it seemed that the most important thing I could do was to share, step by step, how I had formulated my research proposal and all of its parts (e.g. literature review, theoretical models, background, methodology, significance, etc). There were a lot of things that we could discuss, such as writing fieldnotes, which seemed obvious that we should all know already, but after disucssion it felt that we had all learned something more about the topic together. The researchers were of course, keen to know some tangible results from my work, which I wasn’t quite ready to discuss, but which provides me with one more good reason to go back.
Margaret Barnhill Bodemer
PhD Candidate, Anthropology
University of Hawai'i, Manoa
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From: Joe Hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 1:30 PM
Perhaps things are a bit more bureaucratic in Hanoi -- a Vietnamese colleague explained it by saying that people in Hanoi were "much closer to the sun," so bureaucraitc formalities were more relaxed. I found that this seemed to be true for Vietnamese NGOs, at least, and not just for HCMC but for most places outside Hanoi.
That said, as a HCMC-based researcher, I had significant problems accessing government and Party officials in Hanoi. I had all the right letters from my sponsoring institution and had the institution's secretary set up the appointments. Most of the time I was granted an interview or meeting. Other times my "meeting" was redirected to a coffee shop where we talked off-the-record. Still other times I got the run-around, or was given a lame excuse at the last minute. I never had these kinds of problems in HCMC except for the instance I asked to have access to a set of data collected by a research institution. (I learned later that the request should have been made by my sponsoring institution rather than directly by me.)
Never have I run into the kind of problem Shawn described where my courtesy call was rebuffed by a functionary. I always met with courtesy. Just lucky, I guess.
Cheers,
Joe Hannah
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From: rupert@friederichsen.net <rupert@friederichsen.net>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Date: Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 3:44 AM
Dear all,
My experience (based on observation of an agricultural research program active since 2000)with working in Son La province supports Joe Hannah’s point that foreign researchers have to expect different degrees of problems related to red tape depending on the region. The uplands, being “minority areas” and close to national borders, certainly are at the ‘rather complicated’ end of that spectrum. However, officials change, the situation in villages changes, and different ethnic groups are considered to be more or less 'sensitive', making access a bit of a gamble.
However, generally technical, production-oriented research tended to be perceived by local authorities (and Vietnamese researcher colleagues) as much less problematic than social science research, particularly as soon as the workings of ‘the state’ were under question. While this is probably not surprising at all to most on the VSG list, it does throw open many questions as to the ethics and role of foreign researchers in the local research system (and wider polity) – in this case through collaborative, and ‘participatory’ research. The conclusion I reach in my PhD dissertation (soon to be published) is that, in contrast to the programmatic position of ‘participatory (agricultural) research’, mostly state officials and local researchers, and to a much more limited degree villagers, can influence research processes and are in that sense empowered, as envisaged by proponents of participatory research.
Rupert Friederichsen
University of Sheffield
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