Recent developments, notably reduced public funding and massification, have triggered increasing concern for the quality of tertiary education worldwide. Higher education in Vietnam has received widespread criticism of its poor quality, and the government has promulgated a national set of standards for quality assurance and accreditation in an attempt to improve the quality. Developing a quality culture in each institution has been discussed as another solution for quality improvement because the standards appear to be unable to improve the quality as anticipated. This research is designed to examine quality culture in higher education in the Vietnamese context. The methodological approach taken in this research is a multiple case study, underpinned by a quality culture conceptual framework suggested by the European University Association (2006). A qualitative approach was used to explore how academic leaders, academics, and quality assurance members interpreted and responded to quality assurance mechanisms, as well as how they committed to quality. Data collected from documentation and in-depth interviews were analysed for patterns and themes. Thirty five participants from three universities volunteered to take part in this research. Tertiary education quality was found to be assured traditionally under a centralist mechanism in Vietnam. This centralism has resulted in limited autonomy and compliant accountability for tertiary institutions and allowed limited bottom-up engagement in decision-making processes. This has led to an absence of faculty ownership in strategic directions of the institutions. The study also identifies how structures and cultures shape quality assurance in the selected institutions, notably reactive quality culture in Vietnam. This culture is characterised by top-down quality assurance policies, disconnection between quality assurance activities and those enacting policy, absence of academic ownership of quality assurance, and a widespread culture of compliance. Importing a quality assurance model from another context to the Vietnamese setting also contributes to this reactive quality culture because the values of face-saving, harmony, and hierarchy in a Confucian, collectivist country require contextually appropriate approaches for quality assurance to evolve in Vietnam.

Author Profile(s)
Pham Thi Huong holds a PhD degree in quality assurance and accreditation from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She is an academic and QA professional at University of Finance and Marketing, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Her areas of interest include internal and external quality assurance at tertiary level, quality culture in higher education, programme development and evaluation, university governance, and TESOL.