Vietnam’s university culture in the present context viewed from the requirements of identity construction (the case of USSH, VNU-HCM)

Abstract

Education is the foundation and motivation of development of a country. In the current context of globalization, facing the demands of development and integration, the important role of education is most evident in the field of higher education. In higher education, a university, which is considered to be strong and is expected to fulfill its mission, must be a university with a strong culture and a distinctive identity. Upon that criterion, in this article, the author investigates Vietnamese universities from the perspective of organizational culture, emphasizing the requirements of constructing cultural identity in both subjective and objective aspects. This issue is relatively new, especially in the context of studying university culture in Vietnam; therefore, the article mainly introduces the theoretical framework of constructing cultural identity, in the case of university cultural identity from the perspective of organizational culture. The paper chooses the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City (USSH, VNU-HCM) -- one of the major humanities and social sciences training centers in the country -- as a case study with the hope that it can help to understand university culture in Vietnam from the requirements of identity construction in the context of globalization and cultural integration today.