Maritime Education and Training in Vietnam

Quality of maritime manpower has become increasingly important especially when this industry moves towards higher standards of safety, environmental impact and sustainability. The National Ocean strategy towards 2020 and the Prime Minister decision on Vietnam’s sea economy development plan, states that Vietnam would make all efforts to rise the sea economic contribution to the gross domestic product up to 55%-60%. Internationalization helps higher education institutions to provide graduates with international skills, English competency, and confidence to compete in the global labor market. Although maritime industry is internationalized and all maritime education institutions (METIs) have programs with global learning outcomes regulated in the STCW Convention, not many Vietnamese seafarers were ranked qualified due to their weaknesses in English competency, skills and safety awareness. This book provides an overview of Vietnam, its current maritime human resources, a brief description of MET in Vietnam and how internationalization can help Vietnamese METIs, and finally some recommendations for stakeholders to carry out internationalization to improve MET in Vietnam.