[English] 

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Structure of the executive summary The executive summary is structured in five main sections:
• Introduction: It presents the context, objectives, functions and method of the study.
• Graduates’ Job search
• Graduates´ job characteristics
• Graduates’ job quality
• ‘Soft’ competencies and effective performance


INTRODUCTION

Context

This project responds to the needs of Vietnamese higher education institutions. Unemployment of university graduates in Vietnam may partly stem from a mismatch between the education offered, and the demands of the labor market. The feedback from the labor market seems to underline this, but employers also mention a lack of “soft” competencies in newly graduated job applicants. The responses from graduates suggested a lack of actors bridging between universities and employers, while MOLISA has stated that there is a surplus of graduates recently given the countries current economy. Moreover, information on the real state of employment of university graduates is not enough for both universities in developing the curriculums and MOET and MOLISA in their management.

Objectives

The wider objective of the project is to increase employability of university graduates in Vietnam. To reach to the central objectives, the project attempts to work towards the specific objectives as following:
• to identify the main characteristics of the labor-market insertion processes of the University graduates through a survey study addressed to the graduates from five Vietnamese Universities.
• to provide information about the employment status, the working conditions and the characteristics of the job of the graduates.
• to analyze the job search processes and strategies and their effectiveness in the different segments of the labor market.
• to provide indicators about the utility of their University education and the Diploma obtained in getting a job, the job quality (in terms of fit to the Diploma, job salary, job satisfaction, etc.) and their work performance.
• to inform about the graduates unemployed and those inactive.


Functions

The tracer studies aim to fulfill among others, the following functions:
• to provide feedback to the HEI to improve the redesign of the curricula taught and better respond to the demands of the labor market;
• to provide relevant information for the youth and their families concerning occupational information that is relevant for vocational orientation and guidance,
• to offer indicators to evaluate the effectiveness to increase the graduates’ employability of the HEI as well as the orientation and evaluation of higher education policies.
• To offer a tool for other Universities to perform a tracer study according to their needs and aims.

Method

The survey is conducted in five universities in Vietnam. The targeted groups in the surveyed sample include students who graduated in 2016. At the time of conducting survey, these graduates have been already in job markets for a year.
• A multistage-sampling method was used. First, each university member decided at least three majors to be surveyed. Second, based on proportions of graduates in the each major, the number of students in the sample are determined and they are randomly selected by applying the Propionate Stratified Random Sampling Method. Third, replacement for the selected sample is also randomly prepared in advance.


• Final survey sample includes 1710 students covered two science fields: engineering and social sciences.
• An online survey is employed by using the SurveyMonkey. An invitation letter, which was prepared in advance, was sent to the selected graduates via confirmed emails asking for their participation.
• Response rates of graduates from each university are relatively high comparing to a common online survey, and the average response rate is 54.8% of the total sent-outs. • The survey sample covers graduates from 21 majors, in which 5 majors are overlapped among universities. These majors are finally categorized into two larger science fields: Engineering and Social Sciences. Then, the Vietnamese questionnaire was implemented onto an on-line platform in order to collect a small sample of data that allowed us to conduct a pilot study.

  

THE FULL REPORT (in ENGLISH) CAN BE DOWNLOADED HERE