Dear Prospective Applicant,

Vietnam has recorded important achievements during the Doi Moi period. The size of the economy has tripled in just 16 years, and the official poverty rate has fallen by three fourths over the same period. Once isolated from global markets, Vietnam is today deeply integrated into global trading and financial systems. Export growth has averaged twenty percent per year, with growth distributed across an increasingly diverse range of sectors and products.

Managing a larger and increasingly complex and integrated economy places tremendous demands on policymakers. The government faces an array of pressing challenges, including regional development, urbanization, improving health and education systems and environmental sustainability. At the same time, policymakers must pay close attention to macroeconomic stability, international competitiveness and the strength of the financial system.

Vietnamese policymakers must grapple with these challenges at a time of unprecedented economic turmoil. As this brochure goes to press, the world is experiencing economic disruption on a scale not seen in seventy years. It is impossible to tell what the future holds, but the consequences of the current crisis are certain to be far-reaching, and a rapid return to the benign economic environment that has characterized much of the Doi Moi period is unlikely. The structural weaknesses in the Vietnamese economy laid bare by the crisis suggest that Vietnam must adopt a new growth model in order to sustain economic growth.

Vietnam’s capacity to respond to these and other challenges depends on the quality of public sector management. The Fulbright Economics Teaching Program (commonly known as the Fulbright School) is dedicated to providing world class training to Vietnamese policymakers and working with them to devise innovative solutions to the country’s policy challenges. Fulbright School faculty and our colleagues from institutions inside and outside of Vietnam, including the Harvard Kennedy School, coordinate closely with the Vietnamese government to produce policy analysis that is timely, practical, and critical.

The flagship program of the Fulbright School is the two-year Masters in Public Policy (MPP) offered in collaboration with the University of Economics-Ho Chi Minh City and the Harvard Kennedy School. The program—the first of its kind in Vietnam—provides the next generation of public sector leaders with the skills and experience they need to address the policy challenges of tomorrow.

The Fulbright School MPP is inspired by the Harvard Kennedy School’s own public policy degree programs. However, we recognize that Vietnamese policymakers require a curriculum that takes into account the unique challenges of implementing policies in a developing and transition country. It is for this reason that the MPP program is expressly tailored to Vietnam’s development context.

Students at the Fulbright School are not passive recipients of an imparted body of knowledge but are instead active participants in a knowledge creation enterprise that is unique in Vietnam. In the following pages you will have an opportunity to meet members of the Fulbright School community and learn more about our activities.

Additional information about the Fulbright School MPP and our other programs and activities is available on our website: http://www.fetp.edu.vn.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Jonathan R. Pincus

Dean