The involvement of industry professionals and barriers to involvement in work-integrated learning: the case of the profession-oriented higher education framework in Vietnam

ABSTRACT

This article explores the involvement of industry professionals and barriers to their involvement in Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) in three Vietnamese public universities that implement the Profession-Oriented Higher Education (POHE) framework. Thematic analysis of 15 in-depth interviews and three focus groups revealed that only WIL activities which were organised at the workplace resulted in industry professionals actively participating and contributing to students’ work-based learning. Findings revealed that the involvement of industry professionals in designing WIL learning content and assessing students’ workplace performance was limited. The university departments’ focus on selecting industry professionals working in managing positions, the shortage of support from university departments and industry professionals’ time constraints were identified as major barriers to the professional involvement in WIL. This indicated that industry professionals were not provided with favourable conditions to participate in WIL and thus, a lot of work needs to be done from the university side to welcome and involve professionals deeply in WIL. The article calls for more government support and greater initiative from Vietnamese universities to improve the university-industry linkage and the professional-lecturer relationship that lead to better WIL quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Work-integrated learning
• industry
• student employability
• higher education
• Vietnam

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia) Postgraduate Research Scholarship and a La Trobe University Full Fee Research Scholarship. I appreciate the voluntary participation of department leaders, lecturers, students, and industry representatives in the interviews and focus groups. I would like to send sincere thanks to Prof. Sue Grieshaber and Dr. Eva Dakich for their great supervision and support, Dr. Nghia Tran for his academic advice, and Dr. Michael Brown for his contribution to the foundation of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the La Trobe University [La Trobe University Postgraduate Research Scholarship and La Trobe University Full Fee Research Scholarship].

Notes on contributors

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Ha

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Ha is a PhD in Education. Her research interests include work-integrated learning, graduate employability, university-industry partnership, higher education and vocational education.