Schooling Vietnam: How Tech Companies Are Training The Next Wave Of Workers

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Jabil, a US company, builds most of its customers' point-of-sale terminals in its factory in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Shara Tibken/CNET
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam -- I was late to the 5:30 p.m. class, and the air-conditioned room was packed when I arrived. I slipped off my sandals, customary when visiting Vietnamese homes and businesses, and joined two dozen men crammed into rows of workstations in the sparse, white-walled space.

This small room is a 10-minute walk from the Reunification Palace, where South Vietnam's president lived and worked during what's known here as the American War. It's best recognized as the place where a North Vietnamese tank crashed through the compound's gates in the Fall of Saigon in 1975.

But the image projected on the classroom's wall isn't a scene of war. It's a lesson on coding. The mostly 20-something students are all here for one reason: to learn to develop apps for the iPhone and iPad using Apple's new Swift programming language.
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"What you learn in school isn't for the real world," instructor Pham Khoa told me over banh xeo (Vietnamese pancakes) and noodle soup after the class. The reason? Classes here focus more on the theoretical than on the practical. That's why the 28-year-old self-taught programmer now teaches others to write applications for Apple's iOS, Google's Android and tour sapa từ hà nội Microsoft's Windows operating systems -- skills they couldn't easily learn elsewhere.

That need to educate oneself is part of a broader shift as the country -- best known to Americans for the controversial war during the '60s and '70s -- is working to become one of the world's leading technology manufacturers. There's just one problem: Even after they graduate, students need additional training to do more than assemble devices, say more than a dozen manufacturers and startups I met with in Vietnam as part of Road Trip 2015. Many require months, if not years, of supervision.

"The training program in universities in Vietnam is not suitable for working after graduation," said Pham Dong Phong, plant director of LG's factory in Haiphong, a port city in northeastern Vietnam. "After university, just having general knowledge to make it in an actual job is really difficult."

To help close the knowledge gap, a number of global tech giants, including Samsung and LG, have launched their own programs to educate their Vietnamese workers. Their readiness to invest illustrates the country's appeal.

Vietnam has a stable -- albeit conservative Communist -- government that's willing to give tax breaks to foreign companies. It also boasts a cheap labor force, particularly compared with China, where wages have risen with the country's improved economy. A tech worker in Vietnam typically makes about a third as much as a Chinese employee (in 2013, a factory worker in Hanoi [ made $145 a month versus $466 a month] in Beijing, though wages have risen since then). The Vietnamese population is also younger -- the median age of 29 is eight years younger than the US and China -- and speaks English as the country's de facto second language.
[ Enlarge Image]About 1,300 students have taken Pham Khoa's app development classes over the past year. Here, tour sapa a group listens to a teacher's instructions on Apple's iOS software.
Shara Tibken/CNET

And while skills don't yet meet the need for high-tech work, education standards [ have rapidly risen.] Vietnam's 15-year-olds had [ higher scores in reading, math and science] than their counterparts in many developed countries, including the US and United Kingdom, thanks to the government's investment in education.

The [ Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training] didn't respond to a request for comment.

When it comes to manufacturing in Vietnam, business is booming. Intel, the world's biggest chipmaker, opened a $1 billion factory in Ho Chi Minh City in 2010, and US-based contract manufacturer Jabil builds the majority of its customers' retail point-of-sale terminals in the same city. Microsoft's Nokia handset business [ shifted its manufacturing to the capital of Hanoi] from China, Apple LCD supplier Wintek runs operations in Vietnam, and LG makes everything from mobile devices to televisions in Haiphong.

And last year, consumer electronics giant Samsung assembled nearly a third of its smartphones here.

Technology manufacturing has helped boost Vietnam's economy. The country's gross domestic product in the first half of 2015 grew 6.3 percent from the same period in 2014, [ according to Vietnam's General Statistics Office]. That growth was powered by $14.7 billion of worth of "telephone and spare parts" exports. That sector (largely mobile phones) accounts for about 19 percent of Vietnam's total exports, topping every other category.
The Samsung effect
The country can thank Samsung for the boost. In 2012, about two years after Samsung opened its first mobile device factory in the northern part of the country, Vietnam started exporting more than it imported for the first time in 20 years. After Samsung flipped the switch on its second phone factory in the north last year, 17 percent of Vietnam's total 2014 exports came from Samsung.