Higher Education purposes through teachers' lenses: perspectives from Vietnam

Abstract

It is generally believed that higher education purposes vary across cultures and education systems. While literature on rationales and frameworks to purposes of higher education has been discussed and studied, it is noted that literature on the Southeast Asian countries’ higher education purposes is limited (Welch, 2011). While researchers in the West have proposed different perspectives to look at higher education purposes in the globalized context, one might wonder if the perspectives are applicable for higher countries in the Southeast Asia. This paper, therefore, by investigating the purposes of higher education through the lenses of teachers in a Vietnamese higher education context, attempts to offer new insights on the agenda on higher education purposes worldwide. Constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2014) was adopted and fifteen participants (eight were in-service higher education teachers and seven were prospective teachers) were semi-structured interviewed. The findings suggest that participants’ perspectives on higher education reflect the national goals for higher education and share some similar ideas with recent literature on taxonomy for higher education purposes. Specific unique perspectives from participants were highlighted and recommendations were put forward.