[Podcast] Entrepreneurship (Start-up) University: Innovating Training Programs Needs to Follow Market Needs – Part 2

3 July, 2024

From the experiences in building and innovating training programs to equip students with knowledge regarding entrepreneurship and to achieve positive results, Associate Professor, PhD. Bui Quang Hung – Deputy Director of University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH) – shares the advantages and the challenges that schools that are aiming for the entrepreneurship university model may encounter.

Question: In the process of innovating training programs, which difficulties may universities encounter?

Associate Professor, PhD. Bui Quang Hung: The biggest difficulty upon building new and unprecedented training programs in the Vietnamese higher education system is legality. When a training program is being built, it must be in the list of industry codes and industry groups approved by the Ministry of Education and Training. The next difficulty that can be mentioned is the team, the facilities and so on.For UEH, building a training program is considered a long-term investment in product research and development, supply to the market and is of a long-term nature. The quality of training programs is prioritized towards creating high-quality human resources for the future labor market.

Question: In addition to focusing on training programs, UEH focuses on consulting and transferring science and technology, in accordance with the evidences by the significant increase in revenue in recent years. Dear Associate Professor, PhD. Bui Quang Hung, is this revenue source commensurate with UEH’s potential?

Associate Professor, PhD. Bui Quang Hung: In accordance with the Board of Directors, this is a positive result for UEH individually; nevertheless, compared to prestigious, quality and brand-name university models in the world (listed as Harvard, RMIT, Stanford), this has not met the requirements yet. UEH has been dependent upon more than 70% on tuition fees while the remaining 30% mainly from other sources, including technology transfer and knowledge transfer. In the future, UEH will try to increase revenue sources from technology transfer activities through further promoting the innovative startup ecosystem as well as engaging with businesses. We would like to connect sustainably with businesses, local governments and communities, resulting in the creation of training products, research results and technological development that are linked to the needs of these partners and solutions as well as solving their specific problems.

Question: The issue of commercialization of scientific research products and technology transfer is one of the concerns of universities today. In accordance with UEH’s experience, dear Associate Professor, PhD. Bui Quang Hung, what would you like to share regarding this issue?

Associate Professor, PhD. Bui Quang Hung: For UEH, the most important experience is being the network of links among local governments, businesses and partner communities to work together so as to solve social problems. UEH aims to form a co-creation ecosystem which is a connection between local governments, universities, businesses and the community to solve specific problems. Our promotion of the co-creation ecosystem will contribute to sustainable growth in technology transfer revenue and contribute knowledge to the society.

Question: Which major barriers can universities encounter from internal and external factors?

Associate Professor, PhD. Bui Quang Hung: The most important is being the internal factor, the internal capacity of universities, specifically, universities prioritize successfully completing two missions including: Training and Research. When UEH trains high-quality human resources and researches and creates products that solve social problems, the capacity and the reputation of UEH brandname will rocket, from which we are qualified in terms of capacity, prestige, human resources, and funding to develop innovative start-up universities. In terms of the external factors, they can be mentioned as institutions and laws.

Question: With UEH’s experience, would you please have any suggestions on adjusting and supplementing policies to create favorable conditions for promoting the development of startup universities? Associate Professor, PhD. Bui Quang Hung: In the immediate future, we must build a legal corridor or pilot the promotion of innovative start-up ecosystems in universities, for example: mechanisms on intellectual property and product commercialization, preferential policies on promoting from innovative startup ideas to forming startup businesses and linkage and joint venture mechanisms in the innovative startup ecosystem. From this foundation, a sustainable co-creation community develops. The first phase prioritizes piloting a number of universities with enough capacity so as to make appropriate adjustments.

Question: From the perspective of UEH leaders, would you please share lessons learned for universities that are in the process of moving towards a startup university model?

Associate Professor, PhD. Bui Quang Hung: The most central problem of universities is to be successfully completing two important missions: training and research. Only then will UEH move on to building a university environment associated with innovative startups. This is not a movement; rather, this is a substantive, standard research right from the beginning by studying typical startup university models in the world towards sustainable development and promoting entrepreneurship with creativity in universities.

This is an article in the series of articles spreading research and applied knowledge from UEH with the “Research Contribution For All – Nghiên Cứu Vì Cộng Đồng” message, UEH cordially invites dear readers to look forward to the upcoming UEH Research Insights No. #117.

News & photos: Author, UEH Department of Marketing & Communication