Nguyen Thuy Tinh Ca says that when you have spent three years at a Vietnamese university you will know what boredom is. “It was a struggle not to fall asleep in class,” says the young woman who is now fizzing with entrepreneurial energy.
“Traditional teaching is 90 per cent theory and badly done. How far can you go with that dead learning,” she adds.
Ms Nguyen launched herself as a brand manager with L’Oréal, then Rémy Cointreau, and is now marketing manager for Porsche, after graduating from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s Ho Chi Minh City campus six years ago. The institution is the Asian hub of Melbourne-based RMIT, which is Australia’s biggest tertiary institution. It is also perhaps the nearest thing Vietnam has to an international-standard business school. Ms Nguyen is now studying for her second degree at RMIT having embarked on a masters in project management.