American businesses in Vietnam are making money, but the Southeast Asian country's education system needs to improve before companies achieve improved profits, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam said Tuesday at the University of Pittsburgh.
Trade between the United States and Vietnam remains strong despite the global recession. The two nations have swapped nearly $1 billion in goods and services this year — up from about $200 million just three years ago, said Ambassador Michael W. Michalak.
"The progress we've seen so far isn't everything we'd hope for, but there is progress being made," Michalak said in Oakland at the invitation of Pitt's Asian Studies Center and other departments.
Vietnam's lack of a world-class accredited university has resulted in thousands of its students studying in the United States each year, said Michalak, who was named ambassador by President George Bush in 2007.
He supports getting businesses and governments working together to improve workforce-development programs in Vietnam. The proposal mirrors a recommendation by the Agency for International Development — a government branch that aims to advance America's foreign policy by shoring up economic growth abroad.
Michalak has served more than 30 years with the Department of State, having worked in Japan, Australia, Pakistan and China.
Improvements still need to be made to English-language instruction programs in Vietnam — chiefly at the university level — before some American businesses can get full return on their investment. For example, technology giant Intel Corp. is in the final stages of opening a $1 billion, 500,000-square-foot chip-manufacturing plant near Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon.
About 2,000 Vietnamese have applied for jobs, but only 90 passed the necessary exams to be considered. And of those, only 40 were proficient enough in English to do the job.
