MOTIVE
Project Title: MOnitoring Trends In Vietnamese graduates’ Employment – MOTIVE
Duration: 3 years (15/01/2020-14/01/2023)
Project reference number: 609781- EPP-1-2019-1-IT-EPPKA2-CBHE-SP
Programme: Erasmus +
Action: Capacity Building in the field Higher Education (CBHE).
In the recent years, the Vietnamese public authorities raised the need to provide information on labour markets in combination with the actual human resources produced by the universities, as a priority for the governance of the higher education in Vietnam. In this framework, the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam (MOET) has started to consider the tracer study of universities and colleges as a core priority for developing the higher education sector in the country. Since 2017, tertiary education institutions are asked to provide MOET with information on the employment status of their graduates, yet the existent graduates tracking studies suffer inconsistency of contents and scatter methodology. The MOTIVE Project, supported and inspired by MOET, aims at ensuring that the Vietnamese HE system address the challenging of reform policy implementation on graduates tracking by monitoring their transition towards the labour markets as well as their employment status, through the set-up of the first National Center for Graduates Tracking in Vietnam. Thanks to the set-up of the Center, the first graduates employment status survey of the Vietnamese Graduates, developed on a unique methodology and tools, will be run, supported by the network of stakeholders to be set up during the Project life cycle. Capacity building activities, namely trainings and workshop addressed to Vietnamese universities staff, on how to manage and exploit graduates data for survey release and on how to support the policy reform of HE system, stays as a pillar of the initiative. The impact envisaged is to modernize the Higher Education sector by promoting an informative based approach to policy reform. The sustainable tools and methodologies develop within the initiative will help to evaluate, monitor and compare the success of higher education graduates, measure the effects of policies and assess the attainment of benchmarks and goals.
The MOTIVE Project, supported and inspired by MOET, aims at ensuring that the Vietnamese higher education system addresses the challenge of reform policy implementation on tracking graduates, by monitoring their transition towards the labour market as well as their employment status, through the set-up of the first National Centre for Tracking of Graduates in Vietnam.
The project envisages the following specific objectives:
- To strengthen the capacity for the Vietnamese to release graduate surveys;
- To build-up the capacity for the Vietnamese in exploiting the data of graduates for the adoption of quality assurance measures;
- To increase cooperation between Vietnamese universities and MOET on graduate tracking;
- To reinforce the connection between partner institutions and society on graduate tracking.
Graduate tracking is a priority of MOET in the current governance reform of higher education in Vietnam, therefore the higher education institutions in the country are mobilized to accomplish at the request of MOET. The Centre, as a research and consultant unit of the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training, of the university system and stakeholders in higher education, will meet these priorities. It represents an innovative approach and tool for supporting governance reform and policy making by collecting in a systematic way the data of graduates/students and provides updated information on the status of graduates in labour markets. The Centre represents a feasible and sustainable tool for future studies or surveys based on university data of students and graduates (longitudinal studies; Graduates Profile, Graduates Employment Status Survey) as it will be supported by the consortium team members trained during MOTIVE. Thanks to the set-up of the Centre, the first survey of graduates employment status of Vietnamese Graduates in the beneficiary universities, developed on unique methodology and tools, will be run. The survey is also a tool for students to access job markets after graduation, and choose suitable jobs and careers for their specializations. The Centre will have as main tool for running surveys a unique database of students/graduates, the VOYAGE platform, which was created by 561656 Erasmus+ project (http://www.voyage-project.eu) and will be enlarged to newcomer universities under the MOTIVE project. Periodic consultation with the national stakeholders will take place in order to influence the governance and policy reform in higher education and labour markets. A network of stakeholders will be set-up with the aim of reviewing the contents of the surveys of graduates in accordance with the changing environment and priorities. A core goal of the project is the capacity building activities aimed at transferring the IT based tools and research methodologies to beneficiaries for running graduate tracking surveys, as well as best practices on job matches and employability (as a priority of improving staff competence highlighted in the 2011-2020 MOET educational development strategy). A network of stakeholders, namely students, graduates, companies and local institutions, will be created and stored in the centre database of stakeholders for periodic consultation on the issue of graduate tracking. The network will support the need to develop higher education relations within society at large in the country as highlighted by the current strategic priorities of MOET.
The project reaches the following target groups according to the relative needs:
–Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam (MOET) and other entities in charge of reforming HE in Vietnam: the Ministry of Education and Training started to consider in 2012 the tracer study of universities and colleges as a core priority for developing the higher education sector in the country. The need is to raise and strengthen the forecasting and the provision of information on labour markets in combination with the actual human resources produced by the universities. In 2017 MOET fixed the rules for the enrollment of students at university by asking the university to provide information on the rate of students who have jobs after graduation. Based on this data, MOET adjusts the enrollment quotas at universities, the structure of training disciplines and the quality of training methods to improve the employment rate of graduates. MOET needs systematic updates and reliable information on the employment status of the country’s graduates and a unique methodology for running surveys to make university data comparable. Also another need is a team of experts in graduate tracking and data analysis for quality assurance and policy reform.
–Universities: following the 2017 request by MOET, Vietnamese universities must provide graduate tracking surveys to MOET, two years after graduation. However such surveys, being at the initial stage of development, have not been implemented systematically nor based on standardized indicators and methodology allowing no comparability among the universities. The major problem is the lack of tools available to universities as well as a common methodology to overcome the inconsistencies in the actual data (proper sample selection, lack of data information of graduates, selection bias, scatter methodology). The MOTIVE project will create for the beneficiary universities a documentary base that is reliable, timely and regularly updated on their graduates to run surveys. Universities local staff will be trained to be competitive at an international level on how to exploit the data on graduates and produce reliable surveys.
–Students/Graduates (and their families): the choice of university by prospective students in Vietnam is often done without comprehensive information on the job opportunities provided by the local markets according to university degree and course of study. The MOTIVE project will provide Vietnamese students/graduates and their families guidance tools for the choice of university to know the quality of the education and the possibility to be endowed by the universities with the useful skills for the labour market. Also, project tools will help students, graduates and their families to know the opportunity for employment given by the Vietnamese universities according to each faculty and degree course.
For the first time, MOTIVE Project will create a Center for Graduates Tracking in Vietnam as a unique research/consultant center at disposal of the HE education system and institutions, policy makers in charge of HE and labour markets governance in Vietnam. The Center, capitalizing the previous experience of 561656 Erasmus+ project, is based on the graduates database collecting only students data (experience during studies) from the beneficiaries universities. The Center is conceived to easily allow the inclusion of new universities so to become a national tool (added value) for graduates tracking in Vietnam. The Center sustainability, through the creation of a management/decisional unit, will allow to run graduates tracking surveys and/or any survey based on students data beyond project life. A team of experts, belonging to the beneficiaries universities, will be trained on how to run graduates surveys (employment status survey) according to international standards and European best practices. A network of stakeholders, including students, companies, experts from labour markets and HE, for periodic consultation before survey launching: consultation will help to tune up the survey questionnaire with new contents and emerging needs. The stakeholders network database will be stored at the National Center.
WP.1 Capacity building for graduates studies based on IT tools
WP.2 Development of tools and methodologies for Graduates tracking in Vietnam
WP.3 Vietnamese Pilot Graduates tracking survey
WP.4 Enhancing staff capabilities to support the reform policies
WP.5 Dissemination
WP.6 Vietnamese National Center for Graduates Tracking
WP.7 Quality tools for project implementation
WP.8 Project Management
Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology is one of the partners in the Project “Monitoring Trends in Vietnamese graduates employment” (MOTIVE), co-funded by Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. For more information regarding the partnership, objectives, events, etc. please visit the Project website: www.motive-euproject.net
