Governance and compliance in accounting education in Vietnam – case of a public university

ABSTRACT

Prior research suggests that despite the mass development of higher education in Vietnam recently, the quality of higher education is declining. This study aims to understand the impact of the education reform on the quality of university accounting education by investigating the involvement of different stakeholders in accounting education within one leading university in Vietnam. The findings from the interviews of key stakeholders suggest that accounting education in Vietnam is driven by reduced state control, growing institutional autonomy and increasing external guidance. This has come at the expense of reduced academic self-governance as lecturers have discretion in curriculum delivery at the individual course level, but little input into the decision-making at the school or university level and minimal participation in the curriculum development process. The findings enable regulators and decision-makers to better understand the dynamics between stakeholders in accounting education to enhance accounting graduates’ competencies and outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Governance
• compliance
• accounting education
• institutional autonomy
• higher education reform

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the valuable suggestions provided to us on earlier versions of this paper by Steve Dellaport as well as discussants and participants at the RMIT Accounting Educator’s Conference 2015, 27th Asian-Pacific Conference on International Accounting Issues, and AFAANZ 2016 Conference.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Please note that the level of control is being reduced as these state agencies are gradually giving more autonomy to universities in matters such as the ability to determine intake quota and tuition fees in optional programmes.

2. The most relevant state agencies in higher education in Vietnam include the MoET, the MoF, the MPI and two Vietnam National Universities, one based in Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCM) and the other based in Hanoi (VNU-Hanoi).

3. Internal stakeholders are interviewed mostly by one researcher, while the other researcher interviewed mostly the external stakeholders. This is because the case university is located in Ho Chi Minh City (in the south of Vietnam), while the regulators and professional bodies are mostly located in Hanoi (in the north of Vietnam). The researchers agreed on the interview approach before the interview to ensure consistency across the interviews. We also cross-checked earlier interviews ex post to note any inconsistencies and correct them for later interviews.

Additional information

Funding

We are grateful to two research grants provided by the Victoria University of Wellington to support the data collection and analysis of this study.