Toward a model for explaining secondary school completion in Vietnam

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2014. Major: Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development. Advisor:David W. Chapman. 1 computer file (PDF); xii, 120 pages, appendices A-C.The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among household, individual, and commune factors and secondary school completion in Vietnam. The study involves a secondary data analysis of the 2006 Vietnam Living Standards Survey which contained extensive variables in its education section. The findings from regression analyses are as follows. First, academic achievement of students is the strongest factor among nine independent variables, having a statistically significant positive association with secondary school completion at the national level. Second, economic status, a composite variable of household income, expenditures for schooling, and commune wealth, has a statistically positive relationship with secondary school completion at the national level. Third, parents' education level is another positive factor associated with secondary school completion at the national level. Fourth, wages in rural areas have statistically negative relationship with lower secondary school completion. Fifth, there is no statistical association between secondary school completion and gender, ethnicity, and residence (rural/ urban). The first three findings should be interpreted with caution due to specification error and the nature of their bivariate correlations. It appears that the impact of academic achievement may be biased upwards because missing data were not random. In addition, the economic status and parents' education level variables are statistically significant factors but this result is obtained when academic achievement was removed from regression analyses because of considerable missing data. Based on bivariate correlations, these three variables show only moderate and weak relations, suggesting that Vietnam is doing relatively well in providing secondary education for all except for those in remote areas (particularly diverse ethnic groups). Though this study finds no statistical relationship among ethnicity, residence, and school completion in regression models, there is considerable mean difference in secondary school completion by ethnicity and residence in descriptive statistics which has important implications for national educational policy. Based on the findings of this study, various other important policy implications are discussed