ELCA Vietnam Co., Ltd: Significant Contributions to Education and Training

Vietnam Business Forum reporter Duc Tien had a talk with Mr. Jean-Paul TSCHUMI, General Director of ELCA Information Technology (Vietnam) Limited about his experience with the higher education.

 

In recent years, Vietnam has become a leading exporter of coffee, rice, seafood and other goods like textile, furniture and household appliances. In 2007, Vietnam joined the WTO, a trade club of 150 member countries, and became a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. I see this is as a result of the continued effort of the Vietnamese Government in eliminating poverty and heading towards international integration and trade. In addition, in recent years many leading foreign groups have invested a lot in Vietnam and have helped the nation to develop quickly, bringing Vietnam into the focus of the international community and Vietnam is one of the nations to get priority for international support in education, investment and cooperation. Vietnam is also a place of strong interest to foreign tourists.

As a result, Vietnam needs more and more service companies in particular in finance and IT. However, Vietnam is a very young economy in the process of quick development with a very young population. The fast growth is especially visible in the cities. This trend puts a lot of pressure on the Vietnamese educational system and could become a limitation to the country’s further development. Fortunately many international schools are already present in Vietnam, mainly in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, covering essentially vocational training. Now it is the national universities who successfully start to raise their profile to international education and research levels.

 

To my understanding, Vietnam is focused to enhance its already existing international education and training cooperation. For instance, during the Swiss president’s visit to Hanoi in August, the two sides signed an agreement on mutual cooperation. Especially the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCM-UT) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) signed an agreement on cooperation in the following aspects: Exchanges of invitation to scholars for lectures, talks and participation in conferences, colloquia, and symposia.; Educational and research exchanges of faculty members, as well as student exchanges at the undergraduate and graduate level; Exchanges of information and pertinent publication in fields of interest to both Universities; Joint research activities.

This agreement is aimed to be a contribution towards a sustained and stable socio-economic development of Vietnam in the coming years. For now it is a solid proof of an already established long-term relationship at a very high academic level, the EPFL being one of Europe’s best polytechnic institutes. This relationship has been helped by several successful Swiss Government Scholarships for Vietnamese students at doctoral level, students exchange programs some jointly financed by the EPFL and ELCA and professor’s visits between both sides, all of which will hopefully be further boosted by this agreement in the near future.

 

ELCA has been present in Vietnam since 1998 and is today one of the key employers for IT engineers in Ho Chi Minh City. Since the beginning of its cooperation with Vietnam, it has been a main objective for ELCA to promote the knowledge exchange and intercultural communication between the Vietnamese and Swiss employees. Managing IT-projects on highest quality levels has been a key factor in the company’s successful off-shoring strategy. This is also reflected in the successful achievement of a “CMMI Level-3 assessment” of its engineering processes according to the CMMI Model (Capability Maturity Model Integration) in May 2007. The central part of this strategy is to promote a regular exchange not only of employees but also of prospect employees at student level in both countries, which is one of the reasons why ELCA received the SOFI recognition award in 2006.