Vietnamese student enrolment in the US holds steady

After a long delay, the Student and Exchange Visitor Programme of the United States Department of Homeland Security has released the latest update on international student enrolment at all levels. As of last month, there were 29,976 young Vietnamese studying at educational institutions at all levels – post-secondary, secondary and primary – in all 50 states.

Eighty-four per cent are in higher education while most of the remaining students are in secondary schools, most with plans to pursue higher education in the US. The number of Vietnamese students in the US has hovered at about the 30,000 mark since 2016, peaking at 31,613 in March 2018.

Despite a modest decrease of 708 students, or 2.31% (rounded up), over March 2019, US education is still very much a brand and overall enrolments are holding steady, all of the challenges notwithstanding.

This is relatively good news for US-bound Vietnamese and everyone who works with them from the day they and their parents make that life-changing decision until after they graduate and become alumni years later. The cold reality is that it could be much worse, as is the case for a number of other places of origin.

Vietnam ranks sixth between Brazil and Canada as a source country for US international students, just 11 students behind the former. Among the top 10 sending countries, six of which saw enrolment declines since March 2019, China, Japan and Vietnam experienced the most modest decreases ranging from 0.15% to 2.31%, while Brazil, Canada, Taiwan and Nigeria saw gains. This is in contrast to Saudi Arabia (-12.67%), India (-6.94%) and South Korea (-4.48%).

In the absence of official statistics and in addition to anecdotal evidence, one indication that Vietnamese are still studying in the US in significant numbers was a periodic review of student visa issuances in the peak season from May to September 2019 compared with the same period in 2018. The year on year increase was 3.71%. In lieu of regularly updated official statistics and a crystal ball, this information is helpful in taking the pulse of Vietnamese interest in study in the US.

Changes and trends

Overall, Vietnam remains a solid undergraduate market, as it has been since I arrived in Vietnam in 2005. If you factor in those students enrolled in language training, community colleges and four-year colleges and universities, the total is 20,556 (69%). Extrapolating from the 2019 Open Doors report, we can assume that approximately 10% of all Vietnamese undergraduates are participating in the Optional Practical Training (OPT) programme, working anywhere from one to three years, depending upon their major.

About 18% of all Vietnamese higher education students are in masters and PhD programmes. Thus, while the lion’s share of higher education institutions’ recruitment efforts should continue to be focused on high school students, there is still considerable interest in graduate study, including among those students who are still undergraduates and recent graduates who have already entered the world of work.

Secondary school enrolment, which includes boarding, day and hybrid schools, of which the latter are primarily day schools with a boarding component, decreased from 4,114 to 3,891, or 5.42%. Since the majority of these students will study at a US college or university, it remains a reliable pipeline of quality students for institutions that want (more) Vietnamese students.

At the undergraduate level, the gap between community college admission and direct entry into four-year institutions continues to widen. This is a recent trend that is largely the result of greater ability to pay linked to rapid economic growth and better qualified students.

Still, US community colleges continue to play an important role as a way for students whose parents are more price-sensitive to prepare for transfer to a four-year institution following the 2+2 model that has been all the rage for over a decade.

Female vs male representation

The gender balance is pretty much unchanged from years past, with 54.1% of young Vietnamese studying at all levels in the US being female and the balance of 45.9% male.

This includes a young Vietnamese woman I met recently who spent the past 12 years of her life in the US in a preparatory school and a university, where she earned BA and masters degrees. There are many others like her. Vietnamese parents are more willing to send their daughters to study overseas than their counterparts from many other Asian countries. In this respect, Vietnam is more like Japan and Thailand than India (64.8% male vs 35.2% female), Malaysia and Myanmar.

This could be to do with the fact that while Vietnam is still very much a patriarchal society, a legacy of the Confucianism imported by the Chinese during their nearly 1,000 year occupation over a millennium ago, societal attitudes towards women in the workplace, including leadership positions, are more progressive than in many other Asian societies, as is the reality. (Vietnam ranks second in Asia in the number of women in leadership positions, according to Grant Thornton International.)

Hot fields of study and economic contribution

Extrapolating again from the latest Open Doors report, the most popular fields of study at the undergraduate and graduate levels are business and management (28.5%), engineering (10.9%), maths and computer science (14.2%), the physical and life sciences (9.6%), the fine and applied arts (5.3%), social sciences (5.1%) and the health professions (4.6%).

In terms of economic impact, the estimated contribution of Vietnamese students to the US economy was about US$1 billion in 2018-19. While the economic benefit of international students has lost much of its political cachet in the current anti-immigrant and xenophobic ‘Make America Great Again’ era, it is still a key benefit of hosting large numbers of international students.

A view from the states

California, Texas and Washington have retained their places as the top three host states in descending order, in large part because of strong family ties in the first two and the high school completion programme at many community colleges in the latter. Washington has 144 fewer Vietnamese students now than it did in March of last year. This is probably because of falling numbers in community college enrolments nationwide.

In short, 40% of all Vietnamese students in the US are in these three states. This percentage is lower than in the past because of the recruitment efforts of institutions in other states and, possibly, less interest in community colleges. Rounding out the top 10 are Massachusetts (1,966), New York (1,544), Pennsylvania (1,360), Florida (1,236), Illinois (948), Virginia (785) and Ohio (781). This accounts for nearly 69% of the total.

Unprecedented competition

While the numbers have flattened somewhat in recent years, the fact remains that there are still nearly 30,000 Vietnamese studying in the US, a country in which the positives far outweigh the negatives in the view of many Vietnamese parents and students. Having said that, US educational institutions face unprecedented competition from within their own ranks and from other foreign institutions for a growing yet still relatively small pool of potential students.

In recent years, Vietnam has appeared on the radar of quite a few countries eager to welcome more international students to their institutions, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Taiwan, China, Germany, Russia and France. Other countries with sizable Vietnamese student populations include Finland, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

Ireland, which has identified Vietnam as a high priority source country, has considerable potential because of the language of instruction (English) and a clear emigration pathway, among other reasons.

The dysfunctional visa system

The subjectivity and therefore unpredictability of the student visa process continues to be a vexing problem for many students who either reapply after an initial refusal, sometimes with luck, or end up going to a second-choice country to the loss of the admitting institution, students and their families and the US. Generally, the F-1 visa issuance rate is much higher for high schools (day and boarding) than for colleges and universities.

In the case of the latter, it often depends upon the type of institution, ie community college-bound students generally have a harder time obtaining a student visa than those admitted to four-year institutions.

It is exceedingly difficult to obtain a visa for an ESL (English as a Second Language) programme, one reason for the precipitous decline in that enrolment over the past five years. (To be fair, another reason is better than ever English proficiency among students bound for English-speaking countries.) The reality is too many mistakes are made on both sides, ie visas issued to students who don’t meet all three criteria and refusals for those who do.

Future prospects

Vietnam is still a land of student recruitment opportunity for interested schools, colleges and universities that are willing to commit sufficient human and financial resources within the context of a long-term, institution-appropriate strategy. Needless to say, they must also be wise and nimble enough to make mid-term corrections, if necessary. In other words, if something’s broke, fix it and try something new.

Recruiters have to be smarter and more efficient than ever in how they use their time and budgets in search of best-fit Vietnamese students. This includes a combination of commissions-based recruitment using quality and ethical agents, institutional services such as digital marketing, fairs, coffee talks, etc, and in-country partnerships and activities.

I still see new ‘players’ entering the market who find success, some within a short period of time. What they have in common are outstanding recruiters who connect with parents and students, healthy travel and marketing budgets that enable them to go the extra mile, including one or more trips to Vietnam every year, a Vietnam-sensitive price point with a combination of merit- and-or need-based aid and a quality student experience that generates momentum and leads to word of mouth advertising among students and, perhaps more importantly, their parents.

Dr Mark A Ashwill is managing director and co-founder of Capstone Vietnam, a full-service educational consulting company with offices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City that works exclusively with regionally accredited colleges and universities in the United States and officially accredited institutions in other countries. He served as country director of the Institute of International Education-Viet Nam from 2005-09. Ashwill blogs at An International Educator in Viet Nam. A list of selected English and Vietnamese language essays can be accessed from his blog.