Introduction and Foregrounding the Work

An academic revolution has taken place worldwide in higher education (HE) over the past half of the twenty-first century, marked by transformations unprecedented in scope and diversity (Altbach et al., 2009). Going with the flow of this trend, Vietnam’s HE, which is considered one of the most dynamic and full-of-surprises HE systems globally (Phan & Doan, 2020), has carried out numerous governance reforms and initiatives to transition from a centrally managed model to a partially marketised structure. This chapter aims to get a glimpse into the institutional setting of Vietnam and the heterogeneity of its HE system. It also highlights the trends in the worldwide HE, which potentially exert an influence on the HE complexity of Vietnam. We will pinpoint why studying Vietnam’s HE governance, university autonomy, and quality assurance (QA) using an empirical evidence-based approach is worthwhile and might serve as a distinctive example to demonstrate how differences in adopting various education models from the West and the East can be harmonised. The chapter also foregrounds the work of the entire book, which consists of three main sections: (1) HE governance and university autonomy, (2) QA and ranking and their impact on governance, and (3) governance and autonomy toward sustainable quality education.