Vietnam: The Political Economy of Education in a “Socialist” Periphery

In this article I examine historic changes in the goals, conduct and outcomes of education policies in Vietnam from the 1940s to the present, under the Communist Party of Vietnam. Recent studies of Vietnam's education system centre on econometric and demographic analysis of education data dating back to the early 1990s, when Vietnam began an unprecedented economic boom and when the quality and availability of education data improved dramatically. While I incorporate some of the findings of these recent studies, and while I concur with many of their conclusions, my analysis here is more historical and sociological and is focused on institutions.