Privatization and Public – Private Delineation: Areas of blurriness and distinctiveness in Vietnamese Universities

• In Event: Perceptions of a moving target: how for-profit higher education is viewed globally

Proposal

The public-private issues have been of much interest and importance in educational policy and scholarship yet the complexity of the subject matter allows researchers only so far in forming theories about the distinctive behaviors of each sector (Bernasconi, 2011; Levy, 1987, 2011). Although the public-private distinction or delineation might be a result of the law and how higher education is regulated in a country, differences exist beyond what is set forth by the law (Bernasconi 2011, Levy 2011). Even when the law provides similar treatments for the two sectors, it does not necessarily follow that public and private institutions would behave in the same manner in governance, finance, or function (Bernasconi 2011). There is an increasing blurriness in public-private distinction along the three dimensions of governance, finance, and function, especially in the context of declining public funding and increasing privatization in higher education (Levy 2006, ADB 2012). While public-private blurriness has been evident in the U.S. case, it is also emerging in young PHE sectors where there is decreasing State involvement, more private funding in the public sector or more public money in the private one (Levy 2011). The paper examines the public – private delineation in Vietnamese universities in the context of the privatization policy. Using data on individual institutions’ sources of funding and undergraduate program provision, the paper provides empirical evidence of increased blurriness in finance and the extent of functional distinctiveness, or the lack thereof, in the three sectors of Vietnamese universities: public traditional, public autonomous, and private for-profit.

Author

• Lan Hoang, State University of New York at Albany