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The Silent Crisis of Higher Education

  • 7 hours ago
  • 7 min read

Vietnam's higher education faces a crisis not of resources but of direction. When we stop asking what education is for, the university drifts from forming human beings into distributing opportunities, and five quiet signs of erosion reveal the drift at work.


An empty lecture hall

Originally published on Tia Sang - 7/4/2026, 10:13 (GMT+7): https://tiasang.com.vn/cuoc-khung-hoang-am-tham-cua-giao-duc-dai-hoc-5059223.html. Translated to English by HAPRI editor team. Bilingual edition available at the end of the article.


Having moved past a period of hardship marked by lack of funding, infrastructure, human resources, and technology, Vietnamese higher education now faces a less visible crisis: a crisis of direction.


This is when universities continue to expand, curricula continue to be reformed, reports remain full of indicators, yet we have not cared enough to answer a fundamental question: what does education exist for?


As long as that question remains unclear, everything else easily falls out of order. Means are mistaken for ends. Rankings encroach upon educational quality. Surface appeal encroaches upon academic value. Short-term satisfaction becomes more important than the long-term growth of learners.


It is precisely at this point that the problem of education is no longer merely a matter of operational technique; it belongs to philosophy. The world's leading universities, despite their vastly different histories and models, converge on one core point: they view the university as a place for the pursuit of truth, the nurturing of intellectual freedom, the integration of learning with research, and the contribution to society at the highest standards.

As long as the question of what education exists for remains unclear, everything else easily falls out of order.-Dr. Vo Tat Thang

From that perspective, the story of Vietnamese higher education today should not be framed merely as a problem of admissions, financial autonomy, curriculum reform, or ranking improvement. Those things are important, but they are matters of secondary urgency.


The matter of primary urgency is to ask again: what kind of person do we want the university to cultivate, and what kind of society do we want education to help build? Without answering that question, every reform will easily chase whatever is most immediately visible: revenue, scale, metrics, communications, and "friendliness."


Once that question is answered, even small reforms can find the right direction. This article is built on that conviction: to revitalize Vietnamese education, we must begin by restoring a sufficiently high order of values for education.

The story of Vietnamese higher education should not be framed merely as a problem of admissions, financial autonomy, curriculum reform, or ranking improvement. -Dr. Vo Tat Thang

Training Adaptable People Who Are Not Necessarily Trustworthy

A higher education system goes astray not when it concerns itself with employment, professional competency, or social effectiveness. Those concerns are legitimate. It goes astray when those things become the entire definition of education. When that happens, the university shifts from forming human beings to distributing opportunities. Students come to school primarily to gain advantages. Families invest in education primarily to recoup benefits. Educational institutions compete primarily to attract customers.


Within that logic, academic standards easily come to be seen as obstacles, rigor easily appears unfriendly, and depth of knowledge easily comes to be seen as a luxury. This is a silent deviation, because surface indicators still improve and can still bear the name "innovation." But in substance, education is being reduced to an impoverished meaning: a tool for adapting to the market.


The world's leading universities reveal a different understanding. Harvard does not describe General Education as a supplementary package of knowledge, but as a space where students learn to place their learning within a broader world and confront big questions beyond their narrow specializations. Cambridge defines its mission as contributing to society through education, learning, and research at the highest levels of international excellence; in its education vision, the university emphasizes breadth and depth of learning and the connection between teaching, scholarship, and research. Waseda maintains its founding principles, which include "academic independence," "the application of scholarship to practice," and "the cultivation of good citizens." The University of Tokyo speaks of cultivating "intellectual citizens with a global perspective and a sense of the future."


This shows that where depth is prioritized, education is not understood as a process of "meeting needs" in a narrow sense. It is understood as a process of forming human beings with the capacity for judgment, with character, and with responsibility toward the common life.


From these comparisons, we can see that the root cause of the higher education crisis in Vietnam today is not merely a lack of resources or governance deficiencies, but something deeper: the impoverishment of our conception of the human person and of the purpose of education. When the university is no longer seen as a place to elevate people through learning, intellectual freedom, character, and the spirit of service, then every discussion of reform is easily dragged down to the plane of convenience. Such an education system may produce many well-adapted people, but it cannot guarantee that it will produce trustworthy people. And a society cannot develop sustainably on a foundation of pure adaptation. It needs people who know how to live with truth, who know how to think for themselves, and who know how to hold themselves against what is false. This is precisely what the great university traditions have always sought to protect, each in their own way.

A higher education system goes astray when concerns about employment, professional competency, or social effectiveness become the entire definition of education. -Dr. Vo Tat Thang

The Gradual Erosion of Standards

Decline in higher education does not manifest through a single immediately identifiable event. It arrives through the gradual erosion of standards.


  • The first sign is the loosening of the relationship with the truth. A declining education system does not necessarily lie blatantly; it usually begins by letting the language of display overtake the language of honesty. People speak more and more about excellence, creative innovation, globalization, and quality, but have less and less courage to speak truthfully about what is weak, what is unripe, and what is fake. Meanwhile, the leading universities place freedom of thought and truth at the center of university life. Cambridge names freedom of thought and expression as a core value. Humboldt declares that it lives, promotes, and protects freedom, truth, equality, diversity, inclusion, and democracy in teaching, research, and social commitment. UNESCO emphasizes that academic freedom and freedom of science are central components of the right to education and the right to share in the benefits of scientific progress; without intellectual freedom and autonomy, the capacity to pursue scientific truth and the reliability of academic work will be significantly diminished.


  • The second sign is the replacement of depth with convenience. Under competitive admissions pressures and the struggle for survival, universities are easily tempted to make learning more "comfortable": easy to enter, easy to pass, easy to satisfy, easy to publicize. But genuine universities have never been built on leniency. Cambridge has spoken directly about maintaining the highest standards, developing both the breadth and depth of learning, and nurturing the close relationship between teaching, scholarship, and research. Harvard describes General Education as a space where students learn to answer difficult questions that lie outside their own area of specialization, not a place that makes learning easier. This reminds us that genuine education does not cater to the desire for ease; it trains people by demanding that they go beyond themselves.


  • The third sign is the separation of teaching and research. The Humboldt model has had profound influence precisely because it placed the unity of research and teaching at the center of the modern university. In that spirit, learners do not merely receive pre-packaged knowledge; they must enter into the life of questions, evidence, and critique. Cambridge also emphasizes "nurturing the close relationship between teaching, scholarship, and research" in its education vision. When teaching becomes mere textbook transfer and research is reduced to administrative quotas or a race for publication numbers, the university spirit will disintegrate. Vietnam today urgently needs to be vigilant against this disintegration: having more publications does not necessarily mean a stronger university, if classrooms remain one-directional, remain poor in questions, and students remain estranged from the spirit of research.

The Humboldt model has had profound influence precisely because it placed the unity of research and teaching at the center of the modern university. Dr. Vo Tat Thang

  • The fourth sign is the distortion of autonomy. In principle, autonomy is an important condition of the modern university. UNESCO since 1997 has emphasized the necessary guarantees for higher education teaching personnel, including the right to access diverse academic sources without censorship or intellectual interference, as part of the free environment needed for teaching, scholarship, and research. But autonomy can be misunderstood if it comes to mean only financial self-reliance. When that happens, revenue pressure can gradually push educational institutions toward catering to the market, catering to students, catering to metrics, and eventually lowering standards to purchase scale. Thus, the problem does not lie in autonomy itself; the problem lies in whether autonomy is still bound by a philosophy higher than short-term interests.


  • Finally, the most serious sign is the erosion of academic dignity. Dignity here does not mean the formal self-regard of the institution. It is the capacity to know shame before dishonesty, to know how to refuse false achievements, to know how to uphold standards. A university system that has lost self-respect will find it very difficult to maintain autonomy. And once self-respect has declined, every technical reform will only touch the surface.


(Next installment: The Renaissance of Higher Education Is the Renaissance of the Human Ideal)


References



Bilingual Edition


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