University–Industry Linkages in Promoting Technology Transfer: A Study of Vietnamese Technical and Engineering Universities

Abstract

Both university and industry are key actors of the national innovation system (NIS) of any country (OECD (1997) National Innovation Systems, OECD Publishing, Paris). Not only does the university or industry contribute to the knowledge production and transformation in the NIS as an individual actor but also the collaboration between these two institutions is increasingly a critical component of the NIS. This is truly illustrated either in developed countries or in developing ones. This article first reviews the current status of NIS in Vietnam to see the contribution of Vietnamese universities in knowledge transfer. Second, it describes the collaboration between university and industry in Vietnam by presenting the findings of a survey of 570 respondents, who are teaching at five Vietnamese technical and engineering universities to better understand the different types of university-industry (U–I) collaboration and motivations of and barriers to the university and industry linkage in Vietnam. Based on such findings, some recommendations to promote the university and industry linkage in research and technology transfer are proposed for the university, the industry and the government so that the Vietnam’s NIS will have more impact on economic development.

Keywords

National innovation system U–I linkage technological research and transfer university Vietnam

Introduction

In recent years, as the knowledge economy is rising at global level, the essential role of technological innovation in the economic development of countries is highly recognised. Strategies underlying the framework of national innovation systems (NISs) play a crucial role in the countries’ efforts to catch up with technological advances, which are critical for the long-term sustainable economic growth and development of countries. Within the NIS framework, universities have long been considered as an important player in NIS (Lundvall, 1992; Nelson, 1993). In addition to the traditional roles, which were mainly teaching and basic research activities, universities around the world have been taking on additional roles such as knowledge and technology transfer to industry and commercialisation of knowledge.

The collaboration between academia and industry is understood as the transactions between universities and business for mutual benefit. Promoting university–industry (U–I) linkage and employing its value not only can help higher educational institutions (HEIs) face the problem of decreasing public funds (Carayol, 2003) and help businesses gain and maintain their competitive advantage in today’s dynamic global world (Tucker, 2002), but also contribute to the economic development on a regional and national level (OECD, 2002) as well as meet the demands of the labour market to provide more relevant knowledge and skills (Gibb & Hannon, 2006). In this circumstance, the U–I linkage creates mutual benefits for all involved stakeholders and to society as a whole.

Nguyen, Nguyen, Doan, and Dao (2017) found that, in Vietnam, the NIS is still in the making. The government and various institutions have put into place the fundamentals of a comprehensive NIS. Vietnam’s NIS is still very much at the early stage of development and faces many challenges and weaknesses. Among others, the most significant are (a) isolation of research institutions including universities from the productive sectors of the economy and (b) that the higher education sector is not yet operating to its full potential as the source of knowledge creation and transfer.

Therefore, studying the current status of U–I linkage in Vietnam to identify the modes of the collaboration, the motivations as well as the inhibitors of the linkage is truly necessary to provide the scientific basis for developing relevant policies to foster this driver of economic development. The article also contributes to the literature of U–I linkage by adding the experience of Vietnam—an emerging economy in the ASEAN.

Literature Review

The linkage between university and industry is being researched since the 1970s. The topic has attracted tremendous attention from academics, the government and policymakers from developed countries as well as developing countries. In the latter, U–I linkages are still considered as an unutilised source of science and technology innovation (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000; Schiller & Brimble, 2009). In recent decades, many scholars have studied the collaboration between the university and industry. The researches on this topic have included the typology of U–I linkage and the drivers for and the barriers to promoting the linkage (Guimón, 2013; Howells, Nedeva & Georghiou, 1998; Krishna, 2017; OECD, 2012; Polt, Rammer, Gassler, Schibany, & Schartinger, 2001; Vedovello, 1998). According to these scholars, the U–I linkage can be seen in all types of direct and indirect, personal and non-personal interactions between HEIs and businesses for reciprocal and mutual benefit. This may include collaboration in R&D, personnel mobility (academics, students and business professionals), commercialisation of R&D results, curriculum development and delivery, entrepreneurship and governance (Davey et al., 2011).

In addition, there are many reasons that Polt et al. (2001) considered as the drivers for the firms to promote U–I linkage, including the access to the human resources, research outcomes that can be used for the development of new products and production processes, solutions for specific problems and the facilities and research equipment of the university. On the other hand, the motivation for the university to develop U–I linkage is rather simple. Polt et al. (2002) and Guimón (2013) identified some main reasons: the improvement of teaching, access to funding, reputation enhancement and access to empirical data from industry. Despite the growing strength of these motivations, many barriers to U–I collaboration persist, including the following (Howells, J., Nedeva, M. and Georghiou, L. (1998); OECD, 2012).

There is an inherent mismatch between the research orientations of firms and universities, with an excessive focus on fast commercial results in firms and on basic research in universities. Collaboration is costly, and the returns only accrue in the medium to long run, but firms seek short-term results and clear contributions to current business lines.

In terms of outputs, firms are usually interested in how quickly new patents or new products can be obtained and want to delay publications to avoid disclosing information. University researchers, in contrast, are typically motivated to publish research results as fast as possible.

Industry is concerned about secrecy and misalignment of expectations with regard to intellectual property (IP) rights and making a profit from them. Thus, agreements need to be established in a commercially timely manner that ensures the ability to commercialise with appropriate returns.

Difficulties in negotiating collaboration include lack of information, difficulties finding contact persons and transaction costs of finding the right partner, among others.

The above issues were also found in the literature of U–I linkages in Asian countries. While Krishna (2012) emphasised the roles of universities in its NIS, Aslan (2006), Esham (2008), Intarakumnerd and Schiller (2009), Kim and Ko (2014) and Rupika and Vivek (2016) identified the types, the success and failure factors of U–I linkages in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, South Korea and India, respectively. This is an evidence of the popularity of U–I linkage and its contribution to the economic progress of these countries. The literature review, however, has not found much studies on U–I linkages in Vietnam, except some papers giving an overview of Vietnam’s NIS (Nguyen, Doan, & Nguyen, 2013) and the role of universities in Vietnam’s NIS (Nguyen et al., 2017). Thus, the research gaps on U–I linkages in Vietnam exist.

Research Model and Methodology

In order to measure the current situation of U–I linkage in Vietnam, this article poses two research questions. The first question seeks to explore what the types of U–I linkage in Vietnam are and second, what the motivations of and barriers to the promotion of U–I linkage in the country are. The research model shown in Appendix 1 was expected to yield answers to these above research questions. Based on the literature review, the article summarises and suggests the main variables on the types of U–I linkages (from the university point of view), its drivers and barriers. These variables are broken down in the questionnaires for the survey. An empirical study was undertaken to understand the orientations of the academic community towards U-I linkages and their views on innovation. There were totally 570 lecturers, researchers and managers who responded to the questionnaires. The majority of the respondents were from Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST) (30%) and Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (BKU) (27%). More than half (52%) of the respondents were deans/vice-deans of the schools and heads of departments.

As the statistical data are very weak in Vietnam, it is difficult to measure the U–I linkage quantitatively by the frequency and the value of each type of linkage. Thus, this article used the qualitative approach found by Esham (2008), Davey et al. (2011). Thus, each type of U–I linkage and the degree of collaboration were measured based on the Likert scale (1 = doesn’t exist or very limited and 5 = significant exists in terms of frequency and scope). The motivations and inhibitors of U–I linkages were described and measured based on the respondent’s degree of agreement on the Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree). In this article, we focus on the assessment of U–I linkages from the perspective of staff, faculty and managers who are working at five universities: HUST, Thai Nguyen University of Technology (TNUT), Da Nang University of Technology (DUT), BKU and Vietnam National University—Hanoi (VNU). These are the leading universities in Vietnam in the field of engineering and technology with the number of students ranging from 10,000 to 25,000. At each university, the research team used convenient and snowball sampling approach. The types of U–I linkages were assessed in two phases: from 2005 to 2009 and from 2010 to 2015. The questionnaire was distributed to the lecturers/researchers by email, links or hardcopy. The number of distributed, responded and valid questionnaires of each university is shown in Table 1.

Table 1

The Distribution of the Questionnaire

No.	University	Distributed	Responded	Valid
1	HUST	300	187	173
2	TNUT	75	63	50
3	DUT	120	98	86
4	BKU	150	107	107
5	VNU	150	154	154
	Total			570

Source: Authors’ survey

In the questionnaire, the variables on working division, position and academic title of the respondents were also used to test the difference in the perspectives of each group. After being revised several times by trial interviews and analysis, the reliability of the questionnaire was checked with Cronbach’s alpha test, and all main variables received tested value at 80 per cent as the lowest.

Vietnam’s National Innovation System

Figure 1

Source: Adopted from OECD (2017)

Figure 1 describes the NIS of Vietnam including the political and legal system, the administrative bodies, the funding agencies and the research execution.

Political and Legal System

After almost 30 years of economic reform, changing from a centrally planned economy towards the market economy, Vietnam has undergone significant economic growth and became a lower ‘middle-income’ country in 2010. Vietnam realised that it needed to restructure the economy and become an industrialised country. For industrialisation to be realised, the education policy and Science and Technology (S&T) policies have to play important roles. For this purpose, the National Assembly and the Government of Vietnam had put into place a comprehensive legal framework for the development of S&T activities. The Law on Science and Technology promulgated in 2000 served as the backbone for innovation in the country. In addition, a range of many other regulations are in place, including Law on Intellectual Properties (2005) and Amendments of and Additions to some articles of Law on Intellectual Properties (2009); Law on Standardization and Technical Regulations (2006); Law on Technology Transfer (2006); Law on Good and Product Quality (2007); Law on High Technology (2008); and Law on Nuclear Energy (2008).

These laws and regulations have laid the essential foundation for the NIS. More recently, the Science and Technology Strategy 2011–2020 was approved in 2010 which sets out specific targets for the future development of Vietnam NIS for the next 10 years.

Administrative Bodies, Funding Agencies and Financial Incentives

At the administrative level, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) is supposed to be the key actor which is mandated to oversee S&T activities and related regulatory regimes. Other line ministries in education, industry, trade, natural resources and finance, among others, are actors in the NIS. The National Council for Science and Technology Policy plays an advisory role. At the sub-national level, there are provincial departments for science and technologies (DOST) overseeing their respective regional and local S&T and innovation activities. However, with many line ministries, the funds for research are distributed widely, but not effectively, in developing core research capabilities. In addition to these administrative agencies, there are a number of funding agencies that support innovation and R&D activities such as the National Fund for S&T Development, the National Programs for S&T development, the State Agency for Technology Innovation, the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) (provides funding for basic research) and the National Agency for Science and Technology Information. However, the investment by the country into R&D, innovation and higher education does not seem to complement other interventionist industrial policies and support the development of the industrial base. However, Vietnam has spent 2 per cent of its state spending on science and technology equivalent to 0.5 per cent of GDP since 2001. This is rather modest as compared to other countries (Nguyen et al., 2013). In recent years, Vietnam has attempted to increase financial incentives for investment in S&T and innovation. The government extends tax incentives to enterprises engaged in R&D and for investment in technologically advanced machinery and equipment. A state fund has been approved to allow firms investing in technology to have easier access to credit. Unfortunately, there have been no tax incentives for the collaboration with universities as well as research institutions, who are the key factors in R&D activities, in addition to the industry.

Higher Education System

There are about 230 universities, of which nearly three-fourths are public universities, the remaining being either semi-public or private ones (GSO, 2017). Table 2 shows the development of HEIs in terms of number of the universities, the qualification of faculty, the number of students and especially the number of produced postgraduates in the period 2011–2016.

The number of lecturers in the higher education sector (only the universities) increased by 1.43 times between 2010 and 2016. The proportion of faculty having a doctoral degree increased over the last decade with a large number of students for each faculty member. Besides, the number of postgraduates gradually increased from 2010, doubling in 2014 and kept rising in the years after. However, master graduates account for the majority, which implies a lower research capability of Vietnamese HEIs.

Table 2

Basic Information of Vietnam’s Higher Education System

	2010	2013	2014	2015	2016
Number of universities
Total	188	214	219	223	229
- Public	138	156	159	163	169
- Non-public	58	58	60	60	60
Number of Faculty
Total	50,591	65,206	65,664	69,591	72,346
- Public	43,396	52,500	52,689	55,401	57,198
- Non-public	7,555	12,706	12,975	14,190	15,148
Qualifications
Total	50,591	65,206	65,664	69,591	72,346
- Master and Doctoral degrees	30,637	44,124	48,077	54,644	59,736
- Bachelor degree	20,059	21,006	17,251	14,897	12,461
- Others	255	76	336	50	149
Number of students (thousand persons)
Total	1,435.9	1,670.0	1,824.3	1,753.2	1,759.5
- Public	1,246.4	1,493.3	1,596.7	1,520.8	1,515.5
- Non-public	189.5	176.7	227.6	232.4	244.0
Number of postgraduates (person)
Total	15,630	27,920	32,496	33,072	35,121
- Doctoral degree	504	790	965	866	2,100
- Master degree	15,126	27,130	31,531	32,260	33,021

Source: GSO (2017).

Public Research Institutions

Until now, the public sector has been playing a major role in the innovation system in Vietnam. These organisations were under the administration of line ministries and specialised in areas such as natural sciences, social and cultural research, agriculture and engineering. Table 3 statistically summarises the number of research institutions in Vietnam, distributed by the research fields. More than one-third of the research institutions are engaged in S&T research areas.

An unfortunate feature is that these research institutions have no or limited connection with the polytechnic universities and are isolated from other innovation actors, including the private sector.

Business Sector

The emergence of the private enterprise sector (mostly consisting of small and medium enterprises—SMEs) since the reform is an important development within the framework of the Vietnam’s NIS. Table 4 shows that SMEs account for 98 per cent of the total number of enterprises in 2015, increasing from 92 per cent in 2000 (VCCI, 2017). Interestingly, the SMEs seem to not invest in new products. Instead, they are investing in new processes with improved technologies and product modifications. At the current stage of development, this may prove the right strategy. However, in order for future development, investment in new product innovation will prove essential. Thanks to the progressively liberalised regulations towards FDI, the FDI sector has also become an important part of the national economy. Previous studies have found little evidence of technical spillover from FDI-related enterprises to local counterparts (Nguyen et al., 2008).

In addition, the statistical data show that the majority of enterprises are wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing and construction ones. In particular, manufacturing accounts for 15 per cent of the total enterprise population but mostly concentrates on food and beverage productions, textile and apparel manufacturing, wood product making and metal product fabricating (GSO, 2017). These sectors do not demand intensive innovation in technology.

Table 3

The Distribution of R&D Organisations by Research Fields

Fields	Number	Percentage
1. Natural Science	60	11.9
2. Technology and Engineering Science	178	35.2
3. Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Science	27	5.4
4. Agricultural Science	104	20.6
5. Social Science	105	20.8
6. Humanity Science	31	6.1
Total	505	100

Source: Ministry of Science and Technology (2016)

Table 4

Classification of Business Enterprises Based on the Size and Ownership

			Ownership			Total
			Stateowned	Non-state-owned	FDI	Total
Classification of enterprises based on the number of employees	Micro small	No. of enterprises	90	319,097	3,049	322,236
	Micro small	% in row	0.03	99.03	0.95	72.82
		% in column	3.17	74.61	25.53
	Small	No. of enterprises	1,139	97,105	5,509	103,753
		% in row	1.1	93.59	5.31	23.45
		% in column	40.18	22.70	46.13
	Medium	No. of enterprises	407	6,304	934	7,685
		% in row	5.30	82.03	12.67	1.74
		% in column	14.36	1.47	8.16
	Large	No. of enterprises	1.199	5,203	2,410	8,812
		% in row	13.61	59.04	27.35	1.99
		% in column	42.29	1.22	20.18
	Total	No. of enterprises	2,835	427,709	11,942	442,486
		%	0.65	96.66	2.70	100.0

Source: VCCI (2017).

Financial Investment for Science and Technology Activities

Vietnam has been spending 1.4–1.85 per cent of its state spending on S&T, equivalent to 0.5 per cent of GDP, since 2001 (Table 5). The S&T investment in 2015 was about US$790.5 million, which was a significant increase from previous years. However, this absolute amount is still modest as compared to other countries.

Regarding the country’s investment in R&D, Vietnam, unfortunately, does not publish reliable, internationally comparable statistics on gross expenditure for research and development (GERD) or subcomponents—itself a policy gap to be closed. The best estimates of comparable GERD figures put spending at about 0.3 per cent of GDP (The World Bank & Ministry of Investment and Planning of Vietnam, 2016).

Science and Technology Performance

According to MOST (2016), Vietnam has achieved some significant outcomes in the implementation of the S&T Strategy 2011–2020:

The contribution of technology intensity in GDP has increased in 2011–2013 with a corresponding ratio of 11.7 per cent, 19.1 per cent and 28.1 per cent.

From 2011 to 2014, the technology upgrading speed is 10.68 per cent, especially in ICT, telecommunication, petroleum, aviation, finance and banking industries.

The number of international publications also doubled in 2011–2015 in comparison to 2006–2010, which took Vietnam to the 59th in world ranking, below Singapore (32nd), Malaysia (38th) and Thailand (43rd).

From 2011 to 2017, there were 2,860 patents registered, which is 62 per cent higher than in 2006–2010. The number of certified patents from 2011 to 2017 is 428 (Table 6).

Table 5

State Spending on S&T

Year	State Spending on S&T   (million USD)	Proportion of S&T Investment on State Spending (%)	Growth Rate (%)	Percentage of S&T Investment on GDP (%)
2006	246.8	1.85		0.51
2007	286.8	1.81	16.22	0.51
2008	299.3	1.69	4.36	0.41
2009	357.6	1.62	19.46	0.43
2010	417.2	1.60	16.66	0.43
2011	522.7	1.58	25.28	0.41
2012	598.6	1.46	14.51	0.41
2013	630.4	1.44	7.41	0.39
2014	621.2	1.36	–1.46	0.35
2015	790.5	1.52	27.25	0.41

Source: Ministry of Science and Technology (2016).

Table 6

Number of International Publications of Vietnamese Authors in 2011–2017

Year	Papers on ISI/Scopus Journals		Number of Patents
Year	Numbers	Growth rate (%)	Registered	Granted
2011	1,584		300	40
2012	1,964	23.99	382	45
2013	2,509	27.75	443	59
2014	2,759	9.96	487	36
2015	4,288	13.70	583	63
2016	3,828	−11%	556	76
2017	4,546	18.76	109	109
Total	21,478		2,860	428

Source: Web of Science, https://clarivate.com/products/web-of-science/ retrieved on 8 July 2018; National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam, http://www.noip.gov.vn/web/noip/home/en/ retrieved on 24 June 2018.

In brief, Vietnam’s NIS is in the making. With long-term commitment towards S&T activities, the government of Vietnam seems to have put into place the fundamentals of a comprehensive NIS. However, the Vietnam NIS is still very much at the early stage of development and faces many weaknesses. Among others, the most significant are the following:

there is isolation of research institutions including universities from the productive sectors of the economy;  

within the productive sectors of the economy, the linkages between the more advanced (FDI) sectors with the laggard (domestic SMEs) are weak;  

there is a still favourable bias towards the state sectors;  

the higher education sector does not operate properly as the source of knowledge creation and transfer;  

inadequate level of coordination between the policies, especially incentives for R&D for the business community; and  

insufficient coordination between S&T policies at the national, regional and community levels.

In order to find solutions for enhancing Vietnam’s NIS, this article explores the importance of U–I linkages with reference to five major universities.

Research Findings

Overview of the Five Participant Universities

Table 7 presents the general information of the five universities, including the year of establishment, the number of faculty members and the researchers and the number of schools/faculties and research centres.

Table 7

Human Resources, Schools and Students

	HUST	VNU	TNUT	DUT	BKU
Year of establishment	1956	1993	1965	1975	1976
Number of faculty members	1.296	1.434	583	700	930
No. of schools/faculties	17	12	10	14	11
No. of research centres/institutes	13	7	1	7	5
Number of undergraduate students	25.000	26.000	8.000	16.000	20.000
No. of master students	5.000	6.800	120	770	3.000
No. of doctoral students	500	1.200	29	70	300

Source: Website of HUST (hust.edu.vn), VNU (vnu.edu.vn), TNUT (tnut.edu.vn), DUT (dut.edu.vn), and BKU (hcmut.edu.vn)

These five institutions are multidiscipline universities. While HUST, TNUT, DUT and BKU are mainly specialised in technology and engineering areas, VNU is the national university (under the direct authority of the prime minister) and has seven-member universities in natural science, technology, social science and humanity, business, economics, education and linguistic fields of study. But this article studies only the R&D activities of VNU’s University of Natural Science and University of Technology. In these universities, there are schools and/or faculties, which tend to concentrate on both undergraduate and graduate levels, even though they also conduct research works. Besides, there are research centres and institutes aiming mainly at research activities, and some of them provide graduate training at only graduate levels. With 13 research centres and institutes, HUST seems to be a research-oriented university as opposed to the others.

The data show that these five universities have a high ratio of students over lecturers (ranging from 1:14 (TNTU) to 1:24 (BKU)). Thus, the teaching workload of the faculty members must be heavy, which certainly result in their limited time for doing research. In Vietnam, the funds for research activities of the university come from the government, the international organisations/programmes, NGOs and businesses. The respondents also recognised these as the main sources of the research fund at their university. In fact, most of the respondents chose government (both at national and regional levels) as the major source of research funds. A considerable number of respondents also indicated that they received financial support from private enterprises (Figure 2). However, due to poor statistical records, not all universities can identify the contribution of individual sources.

Table 8 shows the research outputs of the five universities in terms of the publications. VNU is the institution that has the best performance for publications in Institute for Scientific Information(ISI)/Scopus, international journals and local journals/proceedings. Nevertheless, the majority of the publications is in natural and basic sciences rather than in engineering fields. In contrast, HUST also has a high number of publications, but most of their publications are in engineering fields, especially in material sciences, physical engineering, electronics engineering, environmental and chemical engineering, mechanical engineering and power engineering. BKU’s scientists have also published a significant number of articles, especially in the recent years.

Table 8

The Number of Publications of the Five Universities

University	Types of publications	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
HUST	ISI/Scopus indexed journals	84	130	137	160	210
	International journals/proceedings	174	187	230	240	310
	Local journals/proceedings	855	1040	970	930	1128
VNU	ISI/Scopus indexed journals	190	217	246	248	308
	International journals	196	243	342	367	384
	Local journals/proceedings	1503	1629	1629	1745	1759
TNTU	ISI/Scopus indexed journals	0	0	0	0	5
	International journals/proceedings	39	28	37	55	53
	Local journals/proceedings	52	75	307	274	68
DUT	ISI/Scopus indexed journals	9	20	35	52	48
	International journals/proceedings	57	88	109	95	153
	Local journals/proceedings	149	152	194	208	236
BKU	ISI/Scopus indexed journals					139
	International journals/proceedings	99	116	145	256	318
	Local journals/proceedings	137	252	302	547	568

Source: Summarised from the statistical data of the five universities.

Types of U–I Linkages

Figure 2

Source: Data From the Respondent’s Survey.

Figure 3 shows that in both periods (2005–2009 and 2010–2015), the five universities conducted all types of U–I linkages, but the significance and the frequency of individual collaboration mechanisms were different. It seems that in the 2010–2015 period, the collaboration between these universities and industry occurred more frequently with higher commitment from both parties (in terms of time, costs and contents). However, the linkage for training activities, such as providing internship to students, donating scholarships, recruiting graduates and contributing practical experiences in curriculum development, was recognised more frequently. The collaborations in research and technology transfer occurred with a lower level of commitment and emphasised on organising workshops on new technologies (mean _2005–2009 = 3,05; mean_2010–2015 = 3,49), participating in joint research projects (mean_2005–2009 = 3,01; mean_2010–2015 = 3,34) and in contract research programmes (mean_2005–2009 = 2,98; mean_2010–2015 = 3,30).

One-way ANOVA analysis was used to test the hypothesis that different universities have different levels of commitment in collaborating with the industry. The statistical test shows that there was a considerable difference in the collaboration with firms among universities. During both periods, respondents from DUT and TNUT rated the regularity of some U–I linkage types higher than those from other institutions. BKU’s respondents gave most of their U–I collaboration types with the lowest mean value (Tables 9 and 10).

Figure 3

Source: Data From the Respondent’s Survey.

Table 9

ANOVA Analysis on the Type of U–I linkage by University, Period 2005–2009

Types of U–I linkage (only significant types are listed)	Total	HUST	VNU	TNUT	DUT	BKU
Firm provides internship to students	3.62	3.28	3.75	4.47	4.38	3.23
Firm and university collaborate to organise the workshops on new technology	3.05	2.80	3.12	3.57	3.62	2.80
Firm provides scholarships for students and academic staff	3.57	3.37	3.64	3.90	4.09	3.36
Firm’s staff and experts deliver lectures and speeches about new technology in the university	3.01	2.96	3.17	2.92	3.22	2.86
Firm’s executives participate in teaching, doing research and supervising students of the university	2.58	2.36	2.84	2.90	3.00	2.29
Firm recruits graduates from the university	3.48	3.28	3.50	4.14	3.86	3.28
Firm contributes to the curriculum development of the university	3.09	3.14	3.09	3.18	2.85	3.14
University and firm jointly publish scientific publications	1.51	1.15	1.67	2.29	2.19	1.16
University participates in contract research with industry	3.01	3.14	2.93	3.16	2.73	3.01
University cooperates with industry to participate in science parks and incubators	1.44	1.12	1.70	1.92	2.08	1.13

Source: Data From the Respondent’s Survey.

Note: ANOVA compare mean analysis with 95% confidence interval.

Table 10

ANOVA Analysis on the Type of U–I Linkage by University, Period 2010–2015

Types of U–I linkage (only significant types are listed)	Total	HUST	VNU	TNUT	DUT	BKU
Firm provides internship to students	4.05	3.76	4.19	4.66	4.72	3.72
Firm and university collaborate to organise the workshops on new technology	3.49	3.24	3.58	3.85	4.13	3.25
Firm provides scholarships for students and academic staff	3.94	3.67	4.03	4.31	4.66	3.67
Firm’s staff and experts deliver lectures and speeches about new technology in the university	3.39	3.31	3.61	3.16	3.83	3.16
Firm’s executives participate in teaching, doing research and supervising students of the university	2.94	2.62	3.14	3.41	3.59	2.65
Firm recruits graduates from the university	3.99	3.72	4.12	4.43	4.65	3.69
Firm contributes to the curriculum development of the university	3.75	3.69	3.80	3.38	4.08	3.71
University and firm jointly publish scientific publications	1.70	1.20	1.92	2.54	2.74	1.25
University cooperates with industry to participate in science parks and incubators	1.68	1.14	2.09	1.96	3.03	1.15

Source: Data From the Respondent’s Survey.

Note: ANOVA compare mean analysis with 95% confidence interval.

Drivers for U–I Linkage

Most of the respondents had full awareness and highly recognised the benefits of U–I linkages. They considered that these motivations are highly significant to promote U–I linkages (Figure 4). Nevertheless, the highest drivers for U–I linkages include:

providing students with the opportunity to approach the career practices through internship and conducting research at firms (mean = 4.3);

providing the opportunity for the lecturers to accumulate practical experiences (4.26);

improving the reputation and images of the university to the government and community (4.22);

providing the university with appropriate information to develop the curriculum that satisfy the practical needs of firms (4.16); and

improving the facilities and equipment for the university’s research from the donation of industry (4.15).

Besides, there are some drivers to U–I linkages in research, innovation and technology transfer that were highly rated by the respondents:

Provide the university with more information on market needs that help shorten the time gap between basic and applied research (4.06);

Increase income for the university’s staff and lecturers from the research contracts, consultancy services, copyright royalties and patents (3.99);

Research and teaching contracts with the firms are attractive to the university’s lecturers due to worthy compensation and easy payment (3.89);

Supplement research funds with the financial support from industry (3.88)

Support firms to conducting technological innovation for building up the competitive advantages during international integration (3.8).

However, promoting U–I linkages to get the best incentives from the government’s support programmes received the lowest mean value (3.09) from the respondents. It implies that, on the one hand, either the university or industry (or even both) do not notice the existence of such policies. On the other hand, the incentives are not appropriate to motivate the two players and/or the procedures for receiving the incentives are complicated. These were also realised by the firm’s managers in another survey conducted by Hoc and Trong (2017).

Figure 4

Source: Data From the Respondent’s Survey.

The ANOVA analysis accepted the hypothesis that respondents from different universities differ in the viewpoint of U–I linkage drivers but in only eleven factors (Table 11).

Respondents from HUST considered that the drivers for promoting U–I linkages were the high compensation policy, easy payment procedures when having research and teaching contracts with the firms and the improvement in the facilities and equipment for the university’s research from the donation of industry. They rated these drivers higher weight (mean = 4.1 and 4.3, respectively) than the respondents from other universities.

Respondents from TNUT paid higher attention on several reasons: ‘Provide the opportunity for the lecturers to acquire practical experiences’ (4.46); ‘Provide more opportunity for commercializing the research outcomes’ (4.37); ‘Increase income for the faculty from the research contracts, consultancy services, copyright royalties, and patents’ (4.14); and ‘Collaborate with the industry to get benefits from the government support programmes’ (3.86).

Meanwhile, respondents from DUT tended to focus on other motivations for U–I linkages: ‘Provide students with the opportunity to approach the job practices through internship and doing research at firms’ (4.65); ‘Motivate the university to apply the theories to practices and to improve the faculty’s knowledge’ (4.64); ‘Provide the university with more information on market needs that help shorten the time gap between basic and applied research’ (4.58) and ‘Expand the resources to support the teaching, doing research and students through the donations and scholarships from firms’ (4.5).

In contrast, BKU’s respondents provided the lowest rate to most of the reasons for U–I linkages, even though they were still aware of its importance (the mean ranged from 3.32 to 4.13).

In turn, VNU’s respondents rated the motivation of ‘getting benefits from government support programmes’ (2.88), regardless of the fact that VNU has been receiving a huge research fund directly from the central government with a unique mechanism as the research areas focus more on solving economical–cultural issues of the regions rather than engaging with firms.

Table 11

Motivation for U–I Linkage by Institutions

Drivers for U–I linkage (Only significant drivers are listed)	Total	HUST	VNU	TNUT	DUT	BKU
Increase income for the university’s staff and lecturers from the research contracts, consultancy services, copyright royalties and patents	3.99	4.10	3.86	4.14	3.70	4.07
Research and teaching contracts with the firms are attractive to the university’s lecturers due to worthy compensation and easy payment	3.89	4.10	3.69	3.92	3.45	4.04
Provide more opportunities for commercialising the research outcomes	3.62	3.33	3.75	4.37	4.12	3.32
Motivate the university to apply the theories to practices and to improve the faculty’s knowledge	3.96	3.68	4.10	4.36	4.64	3.66
Provide the university with more information on market needs that help shorten the time gap between basic and applied research	4.06	3.88	4.15	4.24	4.58	3.84
Provide students with the opportunity to approach job practices through internship and doing research at firms	4.30	4.20	4.43	4.58	4.65	4.05
Expand the resources to support the teaching, doing research and students through donations and scholarships from firms	4.05	3.84	4.16	4.40	4.50	3.84
Improve the facilities and equipment for the university’s research from the donation of industry	4.15	4.30	4.04	4.26	3.99	4.13
Provide the university with appropriate information to develop the curriculum that satisfies the practical needs of firm	4.16	4.10	4.23	4.14	4.56	3.95
Provide the opportunity for the lecturers to acquire practical experiences	4.26	4.24	4.28	4.46	4.45	4.12

Source: Data From the Respondent’s Survey

Note: ANOVA compare mean analysis with 95% confidence interval.

Barriers to U–I Linkage

The above findings confirmed that in Vietnam, the U–I linkage is necessary and considered as a crucial driver for improving training and research quality of the HEIs and supporting firms to solve and innovate product and production quality. Both HEIs and industry are willing to collaborate with each other. However, the survey also indicated that U–I linkage is rather weak due to some barriers (Figure 5). The respondents assessed the impacts of the barriers on U–I linkages at relatively average levels and lower than those of lecturers in Malaysia and Sri Lanka (Esham, 2008).

The biggest barriers to U–I linkage is the difference in the research objectives of the university and industry (3.49), the limitation in practical experience as the university usually emphasises on basic research (3.24) and the time for doing research being insufficient because the faculty has heavy teaching workload (3.21). While the first two barriers imply the difference in basic research conducted by the university and the applied research expected by the firms and skill inappropriateness of the lecturers, the latter can be explained by the reason that most of the HEIs in Vietnam are teaching universities with high student–lecturer ratios. Table 4 also confirmed this characteristic of the five universities. The ANOVA comparing mean test showed that the respondents from different universities have different points of view on the U–I linkage barriers (Table 12).

While HUST’s respondents considered the difference in research objectives of the university and industry (3.62), the faculty’s research capability (3.62) and their confidence in doing research upon the request of industry (3.36) as the biggest constraints for promoting U–I linkage, TNUT’s respondents emphasised the university’s rules and regulations (4.28) and organisational structure (4.08), the faculty’s teaching and administrative workloads (3.98), the firm’s interests in collaboration with university (3.88), the faculty’s awareness of the faculty about the benefits of U–I linkage (3.84), the negative impacts of firm collaboration on teaching profession of the faculty (3.82) and the geographical location between university and industry (3.6). These mean values are higher than those rated by the respondents of the other four universities.

Table 12

Barriers to U–I Linkage by Institutions

Barriers to U–I Linkage (Only significant barriers are listed)	Total	HUST	VNU	TNUT	DUT	BKU
The university has limited practical experience because its goals focus on training and basic research	3.49	3.62	3.46	3.00	3.34	3.59
Faculty’s research capability does not meet the practical needs of the firms	3.03	3.28	2.85	2.69	2.52	3.26
The university’s infrastructure and research equipment do not meet the research requirement of firms	3.19	3.25	2.94	2.96	3.40	3.27
The faculty’s culture and attitude towards collaboration with industry is inappropriate.	2.99	3.17	2.77	2.12	3.08	3.19
The faculty does not feel confident enough to conduct research to satisfy by firm’s requirement	3.06	3.36	2.64	2.30	2.92	3.34
Collaborating with the firm is not a mission of the faculty	2.95	3.19	2.66	2.04	2.86	3.21
The faculty does not have sufficient time for collaborating with industry because of heavy teaching and administrative workload	3.21	3.24	2.84	3.98	3.02	3.29
The faculty does not have appropriate awareness of the benefits of U–I linkage	3.13	3.17	2.79	3.82	2.99	3.18
Collaboration with industry has negative impacts on the teaching professionals of the faculty	3.05	3.44	2.24	3.74	2.30	3.37
Collaboration with industry limits the freedom in the selection of research topics	2.79	3.17	2.26	1.86	2.26	3.32
Firms are not interested in collaborating with the university	3.01	2.83	2.81	3.88	3.21	2.94
The university’s rules and regulations inhibit the collaboration with industry	3.02	3.30	2.27	4.28	2.10	3.32
The university’s organisational structure is inappropriate to support the promotion of U–I linkages	3.00	3.18	2.33	4.08	2.44	3.23
The university doesn’t have incentive policies for collaborating with industry	2.84	3.16	2.31	3.18	1.91	3.25
The geographical location of the university is too far for the industry to approach	3.11	3.58	2.39	3.60	2.22	3.42

Source: Data From the Respondent’s Survey

Note: ANOVA compare mean analysis at 95% confidence interval.

Figure 5

Source: Data From the Respondent’s Survey

In addition, the barriers like the culture and attitude of the faculty on U–I linkages, the freedom in selecting research topics and the university’s incentive policy in setting up collaboration with the industry were viewed more important by BKU’s respondents.

Solutions for Promoting U–I Linkage

Respondents figured out many tasks that universities and firms should do to promote the U–I linkages in which the following activities have higher priorities (Figure 6).

Offer visits to firms for students (4.33);

PR widely the firm-related activities of the university (4.28);

Establish a separate unit responsible for collaborating with industry (4.28);

Organise workshops and seminars for executives and experts from the industry (4.24); and

Empower more the faculty and schools for collaboration with firms. (4.19)

In addition, the idea of ‘propose to the government tax incentive policy to the firms who have U–I linkage activities’ received a relatively high significance (mean = 3.98). Nevertheless, most of the high-ranking recommendations focused more on U–I collaboration in training and recruitment rather than the activities related to research and development.

Figure 6

Source: Data From the Respondent’s Survey

Conclusions and Recommendations

Conclusions

The above findings described the U–I linkage, especially from the perspective of the faculty staff as the following:

In terms of U–I linkage typology, the respondents from five universities confirmed that most of the mechanisms suggested by Esham (2008), Etzkowitz (2012) and Wang (2012) coexisted. During 2010–2015, the collaborations between HEIs and firms occurred more frequently and significantly than in 2005–2009. These can be explained by the impacts of the issuance and/or adjustment of legal documents as mentioned in Section 5.1. However, in both periods, the collaboration between universities and firms concentrated on the support for students in internships and scholarships. The collaborative activities on research and technology transfer were limited.

In addition, there were some differences in the assessment of the respondents from different universities on the frequency and the signification of individual type of U–I linkages. The U–I collaborations in research and technology transfer were observed more frequently and with higher sense in technology and engineering multidiscipline universities such as HUST, DUT and BKU.

Regarding the drivers for U–I linkages, the data analysis also showed that the respondents realised all factors that Aslan (2006), Esham (2008) and Guimón (2013) proposed for developing countries. But it seemed that the respondents emphasised more on the collaboration in supporting the training activities of the university. The higher-weighted drivers for U–I linkages include the enhancement of facilities and equipment of the university, improving the reputation and images of the university to the government and community, the provision of opportunity for acquiring practical experiences and opportunities for students to approach the practical jobs through internships and conducting research in firms.

The statistical test also indicated that the respondents from HUST, DUT and TNUT assessed the importance of U–I linkage drivers significantly higher than those from the VNU and BKU.

In addition, the respondents have different viewpoints on the inhibitors of U–I linkages, which is proposed by Esham (2008) and adjusted by Trong and Hoc (2014). The higher-impact inhibitors include the differences in research objectives, geographical location, the confidence of faculty, the respondent’s freedom in selecting research topics and the rules and regulations of the university.

Recommendations

For Promoting U–I Linkage in Vietnam

Based on the current status of U–I linkages in Vietnam described above (the type of U–I linkages, the motivation factors and barriers) and the tasks that respondents suggested, the article also provides some recommendations for promoting the linkages:

For Universities

The university’s top management, deans and lecturers should have an appropriate awareness of the necessity and benefits of U–I linkages. With the right awareness, top management can develop the right direction and strategy as well as commit to allocate the right resources for developing the collaborations with industry, and the faculty will define the right tasks to do.

The university should consider U–I collaboration as a strategic priority and communicate the message throughout the organisation. Based on that, all managerial levels should develop a strategy for promoting U–I linkages with clear implementing mechanisms.

The university should develop an ecosystem in the whole university, in addition to a responsible unit (with clear terms in references, appropriate personnel and necessary resources); the university should not limit the collaboration within this unit or in engineering or business schools, but they should develop an environment in which the U–I linkage can be developed by individual faculty, division and department and encourage the collaboration with the participation of cross-department members.

The university should encourage the real involvement of industry’s representatives in the university’s committees, from the governance (Board of Trustees, Board of Science and Education) to joint research, deliver lectures, supervise student’s thesis with practical research topics, organise workshops and seminars to exchange knowledge and experience and contribute to curriculum development.

The university should develop mechanisms that encourage the faculty to participate in the firm’s operations: internship, visits, short-course training and applied research. The university should empower the faculty in collaboration with industry.

The university should develop performance evaluation, compensation, reward and promotion policies based on the extent to which the lecturers can participate in U–I linkages. Teaching experience and publications should be taken into account in the compensation system and other rewards in addition to the awarding of professorships.

The university should add internship into the curriculum in order to provide students with practical knowledge, so that they can access the firm’s operations in advance and consider adding practical experience into the academic records of students.

The university should regularly exchange information with the industry to reduce the lack of understanding about the objectives, experiences and capabilities of universities and firms through the PR programmes or locate the university’s research centres near the firms as well as set up the firm’s laboratory in the university campus.

The university should design the sabbatical leaves in the firms so that the faculty can conduct research and/or manage the spin-offs based on their research outcomes.

For Industry

The top management of firms also has to be aware clearly about the roles of U–I linkages. The university is not only the source for recruitment of high-quality human resources but also a source of new technological knowledge, solutions for technological changes and quality improvement as well as the management system. Investing in basic research requires a great commitment, which is very difficult for firms, especially most Vietnamese enterprises are small and medium size with limited financial resources. Hence, ‘open the door’ will help receive the research excellences and experts from the university to identify the kaizen opportunities in the firm’s operations. In addition, one of the CSR trends is to participate in training programmes from the early stage in order to provide the qualified human resources to the society. These are the reasons why university–business collaborations should be considered as a strategic priority of the firms.

In general, the firms should develop long-term strategic partnerships with universities, focusing on their creative and talented human resources, who can assure the innovation of firms in the future, even though such benefits can be achieved only after 5–10 years.

Firms should be constantly ready for exchanging and sharing their own research capabilities and the core competences of universities to define the prospectus collaboration. The firm’s managers and the university’s academicians should discuss thoroughly to define the mutual research interests.

The followings are solutions that firms should do:

Open for the visits of the university’s faculty and students in the firm’s facilities in order to supplement practical knowledge for training and identify the firm’s issues for research.

Develop a mechanism to encourage the firm’s personnel to deliver lectures/courses and conduct research in the universities.

Organise workshops and seminars for exchanging and updating new knowledge and state-of-the-art technology.

Send the firm’s representative to participate in the university’s boards.

Sponsor for the research projects of the university’s faculty and students.

Propose the research interests so that the university’s faculty can apply through joint and/or contract research.

Effectively and efficiently use the research and innovation funds aiming at research collaboration with universities.

Depending on the scale, requirements and resource availability, firms should establish the laboratories and experimental job shops in the university.

For Government

Although the roles of the government had not been studied in this research, the literature review and the primary data of this research also indicated that the government is very important in promoting U–I linkages so that the triple helix can be a component of the NIS (Etzkowitz, 2012). Hence, there are some recommendations for the government and its institutions.

First and the most important thing is that the decision-makers should redefine and emphasise the roles of HEIs, especially the research universities, as the cradle of expertise and potential for solving societal issues. The responsibility of the government is creating an environment fostering the U–I linkage and encouraging the universities to collaborate with industry in a larger scope of training and research. Even teaching universities can develop the curriculum with entrepreneurship orientation. The training programmes with practical experimentation will help students achieve higher studying outcomes, be engaged in learning and have better recruitment opportunities. When formulating education, S&T innovation and development policies, the government should take into account the involvement of the universities and the collaboration between the university and industry. The detailed recommendations consist of:

developing the policies that encourage and recognise the mobility of staff between university and firm;

renovating and simplifying the administrative procedures so that universities and firms easily access the government supporting funds for research and innovation;

establishing the national and regional funds for firm’s R&D activities as well as the university’s research projects and subsidising the firm’s innovation programmes via financial loans using the university’s and research centre’s facilities and services, especially for SMEs;

developing the tax incentive policies for firms who undertake collaborations with universities in research and technology transfer projects and/or programmes, instead of supporting for those investing in R&D themselves;

renewing the criteria for assessing the university’s performance and allocating the research budget for the universities. Such criteria can be: the number of students, especially the doctoral students, number of publications, patents, number of consultancy projects, number of joint and/or contract researches, revenues from licensing and then the number of spin-offs by the faculty of graduated students; and

fostering the establishment of science parks, start-ups and entrepreneurship incubators. The science parks should be built nearby the universities and provide supports for the university’s research teams to start up on their research results, using connections with public venture capital institutions and the subsidies for entrepreneurs.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received financial support from Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training to conduct a research project on University and Industry Linkage in Technology Transfer in the period 2014–2016. A part of this project’s was used to publish this article.

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