Liberal Arts Universities in the Republic of Vietnam–Part 3: An Unfinished Project

After establishing the two main directions of liberal arts education in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) and the efforts of southern universities to maintain autonomy from the state, examining three major public universities provides further insight. This closer look reveals both the achievements and the limits of liberal arts higher education in the South before 1975. 

History provided the conditions for liberal arts education to take root in the South, yet it was also history that buried that dream alongside the regime that created it. However, even in its unfinished state, this educational model was never a purely abstract concept. It took concrete form through the institutions, programs, and people who integrated it into university life. 

The major public universities in Huế, Sài Gòn, and Cần Thơ serve as vivid evidence of this reality, acting as pillars of higher education that met the practical needs of southern society at the time.

Major Achievements, Yet Incomplete

In her doctoral dissertation, “The American Influences on the Higher Education of the Second Republic of Vietnam: The Case of the National Universities,” defended at the University of Hamburg in 2020, researcher Trương Thùy Dung—now working at the Institute of History under the Việt Nam Academy of Social Sciences—argues that the public higher education system in the South before 1975, though it achieved major successes, was still not fully consolidated. In practice, even the five fully established universities of the RVN could not adequately meet the practical needs of southern society at the time. [1] [2] 

Nevertheless, Thùy Dung contends that the most notable achievement of RVN higher education lies in its principles and educational philosophy, and that “liberal arts” was one of the core elements of that philosophy. 

“Educators in the [Republic of Vietnam] valued the principle of ‘liberal arts education’ and pursued it as a decisive factor, ensuring the sustainable development of the RVN education system,” she writes. [3] 

The establishment and operation of the universities of Sài Gòn, Huế, and Cần Thơ—the three pillars of public higher education in the RVN—clearly reflect the effort to realize the dream of a liberal arts university system, a dream that was ambitious but remained unfinished under the Sài Gòn government. [4]

Sài Gòn University, initially named the National University of Vietnam (Viện Đại học Quốc gia Việt Nam), was the oldest and most prestigious educational institution in the South. It had the largest student population in the RVN; in 1973, enrollment reached 64,000 students. [5] 

Thùy Dung’s dissertation notes that the number of graduates from this university increased over the years, particularly in Science, Education, and Literature. These were fields the RVN needed to develop higher education. These were fields that the RVN needed to develop higher education, and they can be considered belonging to liberal arts disciplines. [6]

Precisely because student numbers grew, Sài Gòn University’s biggest problem was severe pressure on its physical infrastructure. From there, the idea of establishing Huế University emerged to extend higher education beyond Sài Gòn and meet the needs of the central region. It was founded on March 1, 1957, under President Ngô Đình Diệm. [7] 

Since it opened its doors, Huế University has grown relatively quickly, expanding faculties such as Education, Literature, Law, and Medicine to meet the practical needs of the South. Furthermore, it was also a pioneer in using Vietnamese as the language of instruction rather than English or French. [8] 

However, its initial establishment faced considerable resistance, especially from some professors at Sài Gòn. They argued that Huế lacked adequate facilities, staff, and funding and that Sài Gòn University alone was sufficient to handle higher education training in the South. [9] 

These concerns were partly justified, as Huế’s main limitation was a fragmented and unstable infrastructure. Immediately after its founding, Huế University had to use various buildings belonging to other agencies as university offices or temporary housing for professors arriving from Sài Gòn. [10]

Cần Thơ University, the youngest public university of the RVN, was created nine years after Huế University and was intended to become a strategic university for the Mekong Delta region. 

It was established by a decree signed by Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, Chairman of the Central Executive Committee, on March 3, 1966. Its faculties were roughly equivalent to those of the other two universities. However, because of its location, it had a special role in agriculture—for instance, in programs to research and test the IR8 rice strain in Việt Nam. [11] 

Like its counterparts in Sài Gòn and Huế, Cần Thơ University faced acute shortages from the very beginning. In its first academic year, it had only 92 personnel, including 29 lecturers and 63 administrative staff. In terms of infrastructure, the university initially had only a few buildings: a lecture hall with six rooms for about 600 students, a library, and a small office for the rector. [12]

Despite being born and operating amid difficult conditions—lacking resources on many fronts—these public universities built relatively modern higher education institutions, as reflected in their organizational structures. 

Notably, Trương Thùy Dung cites that within the three universities, the faculties enjoyed a high degree of autonomy in their organization. Each faculty was almost independent of the larger university in terms of academic affairs, student services, and budgeting. [13] 

These institutional histories demonstrate that while RVN higher education successfully initiated modernization, diversification, and autonomy, it was constrained by other factors and, most importantly, a lack of time to fully develop. 

An Unfinished Project

Liberal arts education was undeniably a real project under the RVN, yet it ultimately remained incomplete.

Professor Vũ Tường has remarked: 

“The liberal arts education of the RVN was an ideal and, after more than ten years of implementation, by the late 1960s, it had become a reality practiced relatively well. 

This is demonstrated in the meticulous research of Professor Olga Dror and has been indirectly or directly acknowledged by many people, including writers Nguyễn Khải and Nguyễn Quang Lập, journalist Huy Đức, Professor Hoàng Dũng, Dr. Bùi Trân Phượng, and even former Chairwoman of the National Assembly Nguyễn Thị Kim Ngân.”

Despite these notable achievements, the education system was bound by several constraints.

The primary limitation was the ongoing war. 

A successful liberal arts education requires time, stability, and a safe space for free debate, alongside essential infrastructure like libraries, laboratories, and specialized curricula. The South possessed almost none of these in sufficient measure between 1965 and 1975. 

Professor Vũ Tường adds:

“Because of the wartime situation vis-à-vis the communist North, public debates, including those in education, on historical and social topics certainly did not include support for the North or for communism. 

The democratic constitution of the Second Republic recognized multiple parties but still banned activities supporting communism, and there would have been threats from the authorities if one openly and forcefully promoted such views. A few people could still do so because they had religious status (for example, Catholic priests or Buddhist monks).” 

In addition, war shifted state investment priorities toward military and security needs. [14] 

Amidst military attacks, political crises, and a reliance on foreign aid, education could not remain the highest priority.

This directly led to the second limitation: a lack of finance. 

Dr. Hà Triệu Huy explores the trajectory of southern higher education in a 2025 study for the journal History of Education. Entitled “A New Higher Education Model in Nation-Building: The Republic of Vietnam’s Liberal Arts Education and Its Performances during the Vietnam War (1965–1975),” the research highlights how university reforms were heavily intertwined with American advice and financial support. [15] Educational initiatives suffered severe setbacks as foreign aid dried up in the closing years of the conflict. [16] 

Professor Vũ Tường expands on this issue, noting: 

“Liberal arts education trains whole human beings, not minds crippled in perception and thinking, but it costs society a great deal. 

The RVN was not wealthy and was further drained of people and resources by war, so while its liberal arts spirit was high, the material basis (teaching staff, instructional materials) was very limited. The level of intellectual development expressed in academic and public debates was probably not very deep, and the range of topics relatively narrow.”

Personnel constraints further hindered progress. Liberal arts education demands a very different type of lecturer compared to traditional teaching methods, which is incredibly difficult to cultivate in a wartime society. A shortage of lecturers, high student–faculty ratios, weak infrastructure, and general instability made it particularly difficult for the quality of liberal arts education to reach the level reformers hoped for. [17]

Finally, the system suffered from the shrinking of international academic connections. To thrive, a liberal arts university must maintain cross-border conversations, access new research, and facilitate international exchanges. Yet, as the war progressed, the RVN lost the ability to secure these necessities.

According to Hà Triệu Huy’s research, professors under the RVN could not fully implement liberal arts practices because the education system was cut off from the global academic community; international links were limited, and international support activities declined in the war’s final years. [18]

Then came April 1975. Sài Gòn fell, bringing an end to both the RVN and the liberal arts education project in the South.

Subsequently, southern education was merged into the socialist educational system. Concepts such as “humanism, national character, liberal arts,” and “university autonomy” survived almost entirely in the memories of those who had experienced the southern system, relegated to recollections of a defeated regime.

When Professor Vũ Tường—himself a product of this system—was asked in an interview if the liberal arts spirit of southern education still existed to any degree after 1975, he replied: “I think that after a few years, what remained was only the people who had benefited from that education.”

This serves as the most succinct epitaph for the liberal arts project in the South: it was an unfinished work whose most enduring remnant lives on solely in the very people who once passed through it.

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Thúc Kháng wrote this article in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on July 13, 2026. The Vietnamese Magazine owns the copyright for this English translation.