Digital Transformation in Vietnamese Higher Education: Current State, Bottlenecks and Policy Implications

Purpose: Vietnam has placed higher education at the centre of its national digital transformation agenda, yet evidence on how far universities have actually changed, and why progress remains uneven, is scattered across policy texts, ministerial reports and small single-institution studies. This paper assesses the current state of digital transformation in Vietnamese higher education, identifies the bottlenecks that slow it down and derives implications for policy in the 2026-2030 period.

Design/methodology/approach: The study applies qualitative document analysis to a corpus of 18 policy and legal instruments issued between 2020 and 2026, triangulated with official statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), the higher education management information system (HEMIS) and published empirical studies. Coding combined a deductive frame of six barrier categories drawn from the international literature with inductive codes specific to Vietnam.

Findings: The legal architecture has matured quickly. Between late 2024 and mid-2026 Vietnam adopted a new Higher Education Law that defines a 'digital higher education' model, laws on personal data protection, digital transformation and artificial intelligence, and a circular regulating the use of technology and AI in universities. Data infrastructure has also expanded, with HEMIS holding records on about three million learners. Outcomes, however, lag behind intent. Six interlocking bottlenecks are identified: Regulatory fragmentation, chronic under-funding (public spending of about 0.27% of GDP), weak data interoperability, a growing learner-to-lecturer ratio (30.1 in 2025-26) that squeezes time for pedagogical redesign, an input-based quality assurance regime, and rising risks to data security and academic integrity in the generative AI era.

Originality/value: The paper offers the first integrated assessment that covers the post-2025 legal reforms, proposes a bottleneck map that links enabling-environment, capability and outcome-integrity constraints, and sets out a phased policy roadmap with actor-specific responsibilities.