By Michael Horn, Forbes
My last week in Vietnam in Saigon was markedly different from my week in Hanoi in ways I did not expect. A spirit of entrepreneurship and optimism about the future of education in Vietnam has been palpable.
Conducting a workshop for the team at Everest Education on disruptive innovation and blended learning. Photo by Tracy Kim Horn.
I met with several entrepreneurs in Saigon. While I also met some entrepreneurs in Hanoi, they had mostly created new private schools. Here the entrepreneurs with whom I met are creating a variety of companies, including online learning providers, after-school programs, and an open education resource platform.
Perhaps the clearest example of launching a successful education disruption among my meetings, Topica offered an inspiring view into the power of online learning to expand rapidly higher education access in Vietnam. As its founder, Pham Minh Tuan, said, disruption is the only hope for Vietnam to provide the higher education capacity that the country needs, and online learning that leverages professionals in the work as its teachers is the only chance to close the gap between the academy and the workforce—a gap that has been talked about in Vietnam for decades. Topica employs a Pearson PSO +0.53% Embanet-type model of partnering with existing universities to create online degree offerings, generally for working adults, a classic area of nonconsumption. Today it has five local university partners and serves 15,000 students with its 300 teachers. It also has a partnership with a university in the Philippines and is building a larger presence throughout Southeast Asia. Finally, Topica appears to be developing high-quality programs, as its retention and graduation metrics rank it in the same range as the top four online programs in the United States.
A second area ripe for innovation in the country exists in the after-school market. I visited a few after-school centers in my two weeks, including Everest Education, RISE, and the Yola Institute, all in Saigon and targeting different segments of the after-school market.
The team at Everest Education has two centers that are geared to helping students prepare for an international education by offering them test prep and English and math tutoring. They have developed a curriculum that focuses on inspiring students to help them develop skills in critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. I spent a lot of time during the week with the founding team and leadership—Tony Ngo, Don Le, and Hieu Le—as they set up several meetings for me in Vietnam. I gave a workshop to the staff on disruptive innovation and blended learning, and what struck me was how much the team is focused not just on delivering education for a small population that wants to study overseas, but also on transforming education across the country to make it more personalized and mastery-based by leveraging blended learning. The innovations that they make in the years ahead will be worth watching.
Read the full article by Michael Horn from Forbes.
