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Observed each year on December 18, International Migrants Day typically draws attention to labour migration and displacement. Yet one of the most consequential forms of global mobility often escapes the spotlight: educational migration.

As of 2025, Việt Nam has reached a record high of approximately 250,000 students studying overseas, according to the Ministry of Education and Training. South Korea, Japan, Australia, and the United States remain the most popular destinations. This expansion is striking not only in scale but also in speed: by 2023, the number of Vietnamese students abroad had more than doubled compared to the period before 2013 .

As hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese students encounter new civic cultures, institutional norms, and everyday practices abroad, how might this unprecedented wave of educational migration nurture democratic hearts and minds among Việt Nam’s younger generations? Rather than measuring outcomes, this article examines the pathways through which studying abroad can transform values, expectations, and civic imagination among Vietnamese students.

From Self-Understanding to Social Values Educational migration often reshapes students’ social values through deeply personal processes of growth, self-understanding, and interpersonal learning. Beyond academic training, studying overseas exposes young Vietnamese to social environments in which difference is normalised rather than marginalised.

Through daily interaction with peers from varied cultural, religious, and identity backgrounds—particularly in diverse societies such as Australia and the United States—students begin to see themselves, and others, not as fixed categories but as individuals shaped by history, culture, and circumstance.

The 1990s and early 2000s in Việt Nam were marked by pervasive negativity and stigmatisation around individual differences, whether related to gender, sexuality, religion, or non-conformity more broadly.

For students socialised during this period, overseas universities often provide an alternative social grammar, enabling them to reinterpret their own experiences through frameworks grounded in human dignity, psychological well-being, and social inclusion.

This process can be especially consequential for those from minority backgrounds, for whom higher education abroad becomes a space of personal reconciliation and, in some cases, empowerment.

Training in disciplines such as psychology, education, and the social sciences further supports this transformation at the level of social values. By learning how prejudice, stereotyping, and social control operate, students develop empathy not only for those who are marginalised, but also for those who hold exclusionary views.

Understanding the emotional and social roots of intolerance encourages more reflective forms of engagement, reinforcing respect for difference without demanding uniformity of belief. This capacity for empathetic engagement becomes particularly valuable when students return to Việt Nam and re-enter social, professional, and familial networks.

Equally significant is the cultivation of personal confidence and self-efficacy. Many overseas universities combine rigorous academic expectations with structured support systems, requiring students to confront difficulty while providing the resources needed to overcome it.

Confidence in one’s capacity to learn, adapt, and persevere shapes how individuals value themselves and how they expect to be treated by others. Such forms of self-efficacy remain limited within Việt Nam’s education system, even today, making this aspect of overseas education especially transformative.

Learning Democracy in Practice International universities often function as active components of civil society, particularly through their role as sites of public intellectual life. Student organisations, public lectures, and dialogue forums—where students, faculty, policymakers, and members of the wider public engage with one another—demonstrate how educational institutions can uphold democratic values and resist authoritarian pressures in practice.

In Việt Nam, by contrast, universities remain tightly controlled by the party-state. Rather than serving as spaces for questioning and critique, they largely validate and reproduce official ideology and policy.

Studying in countries with strong traditions of protest and social movements, such as France or the United States, can significantly strengthen the confidence of Vietnamese students in collective action. Through classroom discussions, coursework, and research, students learn how marginalised groups have mobilised to assert their dignity, secure legal recognition, and defend fundamental rights.

Because this learning is embedded in both academic content and lived institutional culture, it can be particularly effective in challenging beliefs formed in Việt Nam that collective action is inherently futile or dangerous.

This growing political awareness, combined with a sense of efficacy for action, prepares students to engage more confidently as citizens in their relationship with the state—whether in Việt Nam upon return or in other societies where they may choose to live after completing their studies.

It also lays the groundwork for activism, should they decide to pursue it, by equipping them with the analytical tools, historical understanding, and moral conviction needed to stand up for causes they consider fundamental, from environmental protection and racial equality to democratic governance.

Việt Nam is at a Pivotal Moment Việt Nam has a long history of collective action and struggle for national autonomy, yet decades under the Communist Party’s authoritarian rule have weakened public faith in the common good, collective action, solidarity, and personal virtues such as integrity and civic courage.

Its domestic education system has also seen limited transformation in equipping students to function as active, critically engaged citizens. Within tightly controlled institutional frameworks, universities continue to prioritise technical training and ideological conformity over civic agency, debate, and independent thought.

On the other hand, Việt Nam has been open to Western influence since the Open-Door policy, and educational migration has been one of the most enduring channels through which liberal values, norms, and practices have been cultivated and brought back to the country, even when domestic political space has remained constrained.

Educational migration does more than transfer skills or credentials; it socialises young people into alternative models of citizenship, institutional accountability, and collective life. What domestic institutions cannot yet provide, international education increasingly supplies.

Even when the majority of Vietnamese students pursue technical or business-focused degrees—reflecting the country’s enduring developmental mindset—the transformative potential of overseas education remains significant. Most higher education systems in democratic societies are broadly anchored in liberal values, whether through general education requirements, classroom norms, or institutional culture.

Furthermore, theories of modernisation suggest that sustained economic development increases demand for pluralism and democratic norms. Việt Nam’s rapid economic growth, coupled with the powerful trend of educational migration, is cause for hope that a younger and increasingly affluent generation will be at the forefront of transforming economic prosperity into social and political imagination.

For international leaders and universities alike, this moment calls for recognising educational migration not merely as an economic or diplomatic exchange, but as a shared investment in Việt Nam’s civic future.

Learning Democracy Abroad: How Overseas Education Transforms Việt Nam’s Younger Generations

Dan Nguyen

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