Harvard gets government funds to set up Vietnam university

The US State Department has granted Harvard University US$2.5 million to transition a university-run public policy programme in Vietnam into the country’s first independent, non-profit, US-affiliated university in Ho Chi Minh City, write Mariel A Klein and Luca F Schroeder for The Harvard Crimson.

The planned college – Fulbright University Vietnam – will expand on the existing Fulbright Economics Teaching Program, a public policy masters programme that the Ash Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government established in 1994 with the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City.

Policy-makers in the US, for their part, are hailing the new university as an important step in developing diplomatic and academic ties with Vietnam. “Fulbright University will be an incredible asset to Vietnam, because with academic freedom and with the energy and association with Harvard and all of the things that will come from it, they’ll be just a great asset for this country to take its education levels to an even higher level,” US Secretary of State John F Kerry said, speaking in Hanoi at a recent event in celebration of the school.
Full report on The Harvard Crimson site