The U.S.-Vietnam Education Task Force was organized on the U.S. side by the Department of State and on the Vietnamese side by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). On 30 September 2009 the Task Force released their Final Report. Its recommendations, based on the reports of six "advisory groups", comprise the second half of the 55-page document. The most important is Advisory Group 1, whose task was to write a "Roadmap to Establishing an American-Style University in Vietnam". The American co-chair of Advisory Group 1 was Thomas Vallely.
The planned American-style university has the following characteristics:
The American advisers are using a time-honored marketing technique called bait and switch. The Ash/Fulbright report spoke of an "apex university" and hooked MOET with the promise of a prestigious world-class research university. But what the American group would actually deliver is far less than the seductive promise. The American-style college described in the Task Force report in most respects would function like a trade school -- like Saigon Tech and Houston Community College in Ho Chi Minh City and the Thang Long University in Hanoi -- with two important differences. In the first place, the American-style college would be financed primarily not by student tuition but by the World Bank loan of USD 400 million; it would be housed in expensive new buildings with luxurious facilities and PowerPoint-ready classrooms; and it would be run by high-paid American administrators. In the second place, through its programs in economics, social "science", and political "science" the American-style college would have a heavy component of ideological indoctrination, aimed at furthering a neocolonial agenda.
The five American members of the Task Force were Robert Berdahl (president of the American Association of Universities, formerly chancellor of U.C. Berkeley), F. Beccali-Falco (president and CEO of GE International), Craig Barrett (chairman of the board of Intel), Kristina Johnson (provost of The Johns Hopkins University), and Bob Kerrey (president of The New School, formerly a U.S. senator). In addition, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam and two State Department officials were ex-officio members; each Task Force member had an assistant member from the same organization; and each of the six advisory groups had an American co-chair.
In its analysis and recommendations the Task Force's Final Report closely follows the Ash/Fulbright report, which I responded to in Part II of my "Second Opinion" article. I will not repeat the points that I made there. It is no surprise that much of the Task Force report essentially repeats what was in the Ash/Fulbright report: some of the same people -- such as Bob Kerrey and Thomas Vallely -- played key roles in the writing of both documents.
Like the Ash/Fulbright report, the Final Report emphasizes what its "Executive Summary" calls "the pressing need for... fundamental changes in governance". In fact, the main reason Vallely's advisory group gives for "stewarding a new Vietnamese institution rather than strengthening an existing one" is that in the latter case the Americans would not be likely to have "sufficient freedom of action...to overhaul governance". According to the section titled "Recommendations in Key Areas", the needed governance structure for the new "research college" would be ensured by "administrative and managerial stewardship" by Americans. The Final Report, just like the earlier U.S. National Academies report and the Ash/Fulbright report, implicitly defines good governance as imitation of the administrative structures of U.S. universities.
Those of us who are not looking at American higher education through rose-colored glasses have to question whether U.S. universities provide a model of exemplary governance that should be imitated by other countries. Compared to most other countries, American higher education is weighted down by a cumbersome, top-heavy, and very expensive bureaucracy. The vast number of unnecessary and overpaid vice-presidents, deans, associate deans, assistant deans, associate provosts, assistant provosts, and so on are a major drain on finances. There is also corruption on a significant scale -- falsification of credentials, acceptance of gifts in exchange for exclusive access to students' business (e.g., by companies that arrange study/travel abroad), favoritism in exchange for sexual favors -- and the cases that make it into the press are only the tip of the iceberg. Finally, there is the problem of just plain incompetence.
As an example of university governance in the U.S., let's look at the one American Task Force member who himself was a university president at the time. Bob Kerrey was president of The New School from 2001 to 2010. Kerrey's tenure at the university included opposing the adjunct faculty (almost leading to a strike in 2005), running through five provosts during eight years, and in December 2008 receiving a vote of no confidence from the university's senior faculty. Major student protests against Kerrey erupted the same month and again in April 2009. Thus, Kerrey's presidency of The New School was not exactly a great success. In view of the American advisers' attitude of smug superiority on the issue of university governance, it is ironic that the university president in their group, Bob Kerrey, exemplified not good governance, but poor governance according to the opinions of student protestors and the majority of senior faculty at his university.
It seems to me that the condescending tone in the Ash/Fulbright and Task Force reports on the question of university governance in Vietnam and the generous offer of "administrative and managerial stewardship" by Americans (at the cost of a big chunk of Vietnam's USD 400 million World Bank loan) would make a lot more sense if our own universities in the U.S. were run more efficiently and competently.
Finally, none of the reports that I've critiqued -- not the U.S. National Academies, Vallely, Ash/Fulbright, or Task Force reports -- has a word to say about gender equity. Many Vietnamese understand the importance of increasing female participation in university life and scientific research. On 8 March 2010 (International Women's Day) Ann and I were in Hanoi for a celebration of 25 years of the Kovalevskaia Prizes for women scientists. The event was presided over by Nguyen Thi Binh (former Vice-President of Vietnam), and many dignitaries as well as former prizewinners and young women attended.
Despite some progress in this area -- and the passage of a comprehensive Law on Gender Equality -- the status of women in the academic and scientific professions in Vietnam is far from equal. Many international observers -- including even the World Bank in its 2000 report Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise -- have noted that a country cannot realize its intellectual and scientific potential unless it gives full opportunities to its female citizens. Yet none of the American advisers saw fit to comment on this, and none of their recommendations address this pressing need.