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The UMass Amherst Office of Global Affairs has joined an International Academic Partnership Program that brings together member universities to strengthen economic and diplomatic relations and establish new collaborations in higher education between the U.S. and Vietnam.

The Institute for International Education’s (IIE) Center for International Partnerships initiated an International Academic Partnership Program (IAPP) with Vietnam and held its first delegation and weeklong conference to commence the partnership in late March and early April in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Kalpen Trivedi, vice provost of global affairs, and Eric Wirth, manager of global partnerships, attended the event where representatives from 31 Vietnamese institutions and 21 private and public universities from 17 states, including UMass Amherst, explored Vietnam’s higher education landscape through networking events, campus visits and meetings with government and private-sector stakeholders.

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Wirth and Trivedi connected with several representatives from Vietnam universities and visited six Hanoi and four Ho Chi Minh City campuses, including Hanoi University of Science and Technology and Hong Bang International University.

The UMass Amherst international student population is approximately 4,500 students, based on fall 2024 enrollment. Undergraduates make up approximately 40% of the international population, followed by doctoral students at 30%. Of those total international students, “332 are Vietnamese,” Wirth said. “They are the third-largest population within our international student community,” behind India and China, he says.

The academic partnership with Vietnam will provide further support and expand UMass Amherst graduate student mobility pathways, collaborative research, faculty and teaching exchanges and scholarship, publication sharing and programming.

UMass Amherst is actively engaged in building opportunities for transnational education with Vietnamese institutions visited during this program, Trivedi explains.

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“There is tremendous potential for UMass to engage with highly qualified Vietnamese students and researchers as the higher education sector there opens up to international partnerships,” Trivedi says. “The enthusiasm for collaboration with the U.S. is palpable from the very highest levels of government to the institutional level.”

For Vietnam, the benefits of the partnership aim to boost both their educational and economic sectors. The country of more than 100 million people recently made English its second official language and the government has set a goal to have 100% of general education students learn English by 2035.

Goals have also been set to boost Vietnam’s global business presence. The Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) also “wants to build out their semiconductor and STEM infrastructure because they want to compete within the region with Taiwan, China, Singapore and Hong Kong,” Wirth says. “Connecting with top universities with that expertise [like UMass Amherst] is a main goal.”

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Created in partnership with U.S. Mission to Vietnam, MoET and the IIE, the IAPP with Vietnam was formed on the heels of the 30th anniversary of U.S.-Vietnam diplomatic relations and the first-year anniversary of the 2023 Comprehensive Strategic Partnership commitment endorsed by former U.S. President Joe Biden and the late General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong.

“Expanding educational partnerships is crucial to the success of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship,” said U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Marc E. Knapper in a March 2025 news release announcing the IAPP. “By bringing together top universities from both nations, we are creating new pathways for students and researchers to thrive in both countries.”

“The thoughtful planning and conversations driven by the IAPP Vietnam experience ensures a strategic and geographically diverse international engagement portfolio while strengthening UMass Amherst’s global presence,” Wirth says.