Internationalising tourism education in Vietnam: an evaluation of the work-integrated learning process in tourism training programs

Abstract

International tourism to Vietnam, under the impact of globalisation, has grown strongly – in 2013, the 7.5 million visitors came largely from China, South Korea, Japan and the USA. The tourism sector, however, lacks an adequate workforce of professionally skilled, globally literate and interculturally competent staff, particularly in the delivery of tour and travel services, to provide a satisfactory quality of service to international customers. The shortage of internationally qualified tourism personnel can be attributed to the tourism training programs in the wider context of Vietnam’s Higher Education (HE) and Vocational Education Training (VET) structures and processes. Paradoxically, despite the fact that work-integrated learning (WIL) and foreign language teaching were embedded in the HE and VET programs, the graduates from these programs still failed to satisfy the growing demands of the tourism industry in Vietnam. The literature showed that these two systems were beset by problems at both the macro- and micro-levels. Despite some literature on the Vietnamese HE and VET sectors in general, there is an absence of research studies in evaluating tourism programs with the embedding of WIL and the teaching and learning of foreign languages. This study was thus carried out to bridge the gap by providing a systematic and multifaceted evaluation of the WIL processes and the foreign language teaching and learning in the tourism training programs in six selected colleges and universities in Vietnam. The appraisal was conducted from the perspectives of three key stakeholder groups: (a) academic staff; (b) tourism company managers and internship workplace mentors; and (c) current students and recent graduates. The aim was to see how well these programs prepared tourism students with employable skills to meet the needs of international tourists. To achieve this main objective, the research design included both qualitative and quantitative approaches and utilised program case studies as the main research strategy. This included four methods of data collection: semi-structured interviews, document analysis, role-plays and questionnaire surveys. The data collected from these instruments were analysed via SPSS statistical analysis, content analysis and data triangulation. The findings showed that the WIL processes and the internationalisation elements in most of the tourism programs under examination were evaluated as ineffective in producing employable graduates to satisfy the growing demand of international tourists. The WIL processes were not wholly successful in terms of their design, implementation and assessment due to the lack of a close link between the WIL stakeholders (i.e. government, tourism training institutions, tourism companies and students) within Vietnam’s HE and VET context. The internationalisation of tourism education through inculcating global perspectives and proficiency in foreign languages in students was similarly not achieved, except for one non-public institution which delivered its programs in English. The outcomes of this research were then translated into a list of practical recommendations, calling for a closer liaison between the four main stakeholders, each of whom should be proactive in their specific roles for successful internationalised tourism programs with an effective design, implementation and assessment of WIL processes.

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