Raymond Gordon, BUV vice chancellor and president

At the second discussion panel on "Fostering new investment" at the VIR-hosted conference on May 15 titled "Stronger investment partnerships for a thriving Vietnam", Gordon, BUV vice chancellor and president said that investments in education, especially higher education, were large, long-term capital investments, so were not a very hot field in attracting investment.

"But this is one of the important areas in life and business activities because it affects the quality of human resources," he said.

Seeing a big promising land here, the BUV president said that Vietnam was now a ‘gem’ or ‘diamond’ in Asia, in terms of investment opportunities in education.

Asia is very densely populated, and the higher education sector also has many names in high-quality education. In Vietnam, there are many prestigious public universities, but investment in international higher education is still a promising land for investors, he said.

"Every day, people come to BUV to look for the learning model here and want to study," said Gordon. "Many other schools in the UK and other countries are also intending to learn about the business investment environment in Vietnam in education."

Although the opportunities are open widely and the potential is visible, so are the risks. He said that investors in education should choose a suitable and sustainable way of doing things, depending on every investor.

The BUV president said that the key issue was that while the legal framework and regulations had made many improvements and reforms, they had not moved quickly enough, adding that this hindered the development of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the education sector in Vietnam.

"Vietnam needs to further improve regulations and ways to attract more FDI in education, contributing to improving the quality of human resources, serving the socioeconomic development in the time to come," he said.

As for some other areas in education, he said that investing in kindergartens, middle schools and high schools would be easier for foreign investors.

“We need to change skills training, improve curricula, create, innovate in the spirit of cooperation. In the future, how will we have to work together to solve the issues?" the BUV president said.

BUV currently has training programmes associated with about 3,000 high schools.

To encourage FDI in the education sector in the short term, Gordon said that there should be a mechanism for the state to dialogue with investors, including foreign-invested enterprises, in the implementation of educational institutions and regulatory frameworks.

“I believe that in the future there will be more high-class, high-quality universities present and operating in Vietnam. And BUV will continue to build links with Vietnamese partners to train intellectual human resources,” Gordon added.