Impacts of Urban Institutions of Higher Education on the Community: A Social Approach

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the effects of urban institutions of higher education on social sustainability of the community. Three urban colleges in Vietnam were involved in this study. Methods: Questionnaires and interviews were administered to 120 local residents and 1470 students and college employees (office and teaching staff) living in the nearby communities. In the interviews, the researcher made efforts to explore in-depth information by providing prompts in order to confirm, interpret and supplement the quantitative data collected from the questionnaires. Findings: All participants responded that the colleges contributed greatly to the social equity through rentals, food consumption, and other services available. However, though some local residents took a positive view of social diversity, others were conservative. The social cohesions took place in the community where its members were willing to welcome new cultures. Most local residents were not confident about community security when there were many new members. Noise and traffic also caused much concern to local residents. Implications for Research and Practice: It is suggested that local residents should distribute equital gains to physically and financially challenged people in the community. Other implications were given to researchers, policy makers, community members, and student tenants living around college. Further studies can take a holistic approach to sustainable development as a result of the effects of educational institutions. Researchers may also take into account more educational institutions of higher education in other contexts.

Keywords:

Social sustainability, higher education, impacts, community educational institutions,

PDF

___

Adams, W. M. (2006). The future of sustainability: Rethinking environment and development in the twenty-first century. Report of the IUCN Renowned Thinkers Meeting.
Bagceli Kahraman, P. & Onur Sezer, G. (2017). Relationship between attitudes of multicultural education and perceptions regarding cultural effect of globalization. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 67, 233-249. Doi: 10.14689/ejer.2017.67.14.
Cato, S. M. (2009). Green economics. Earthscan Publications: London.
Cook, S. & Esuna, D. (2014) Rethinking social development for post-2015 world. Development, 57(1), 30-35.
Dave, S. (2011). Neighborhood density and social sustainability in cities and urban countries. Sustainable Development, 19, 189-206. Doi: 10.1002/sd.433.
Davidson, M. (2010). Social sustainability and the city. Geography Compass, 4(7), 872-880. Doi: 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2010.00339.x.
Dempsey, N., Bramley, G., Power, S. & Brown, C. (2011). The social dimension of sustainable development: Defining urban social sustainability. Sustainable Development, 19(5), 289-300. Doi: 10.1002/sd.417
Gass, S. M. & Mackey, A. (2000). Stimulated recall methodology in second language research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Hayden, M. & Thiep, L. Q. (2007). Institutional autonomy for higher education in Vietnam. Higher Education Research and Development, 26(1), 73-85. Doi: 10.1080/07294360601166828.
Hoa, C. T. H. & Vien, T. (2018). The integration of intercultural education into teaching English: What Vietnamese teachers do and say. International Journal of Instruction, 12(1), 441-456. Doi: 10.29333/iji.2019.12129a.
Hung, B. P. (2017). Vietnamese students learning the semantics of English prepositions. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies, 17(4). 146-158. Doi: 10.17576/gema-2017-1704-10.
Hung, B. P., Truong, V. & Nguyen, N. V. (2018). Students’ responses to CL-based teaching of English prepositions. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 73(3), 41-58. Doi: 10.14689/ejer.2018.73.3.
Hung, B. P. & Van, L. (2018). Depicting and outlining as pre-writing strategies: Experimental results and learners’ opinions. International Journal of Instruction, 11(2), 451-464. Doi: 10.12973/iji.2018.11231a.
Hung, B. P., Vien, T. & Vu, N. N. (2018). Applying cognitive linguistics to teaching English prepositions: A quasi-experimental study. International Journal of Instruction, 11(3), 327-346. Doi: 10.12973/iji.2018.11323a.
Johansson, T.; Segerstedt, E.; Olofsson, T. & Jakobsson, M. (2016). Revealing social values by 3D city visualization in city transformations. Sustainability, 8(2), 195. Doi: 10.3390/su8020195.
Lawhan, L. L. (2009). The neighborhood unit: Physical design or physical determinism? Journal of Planning and History, 8(2), 11-132. Doi: 10.1177/1538513208327072. McKim, C. A. (2017). The values of mixed methods research: A mixed methods study. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 11(2), 202-222. Doi: 10.1177/1558689815607096.
McMillan, J. H. & Schumacher, S. (2001). Research in education: A conceptual introduction (5th ed.); Longman: New York. Nha, N. V. & Tu, V. N. (2015). Higher education in Vietnam: Current situation, challenges and solutions. VNU Journal of Science, 31(4), 85-97.
Nieuwenhuis, J. & Hooimeijer, P. (2015). The association between neighborhoods and educational achievement, a system review and meta analysis. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 31(2), 321-347. Doi: 10.1007/s10901-015-9460-7.
Nieuwenhuis, J., Hooimeijer, P. Dorsselaer, S. V. & Vollebergh, W. (2013). Neighborhood effects on school achievement: The mediating effect of parenting and problematic behavior, Environment and Planning A, 45(9), 2135-2153.
Omar, D. Bt., Abdullah, F., Yusof, F., Hamdan, H., Nasrudin, N. & Abullah. (2011). The impacts of off-campus students on local neighborhood in Malaysia, International Journal of Social, Human Science and Engineering, 5(10), 24-30.
Polese, M. & Stren, R. (2000). The social sustainability of cities: Diversity and the management of change; University of Tokyo Press: Tokyo.
Reed, R. G. & Wilkinson, S. J. (2005). The increasing importance of sustainability for building ownership. Journal of Corporate Real Estate, 7(4), 339-350. Doi: 10.1108/14630010510700831.
Rogers, P. P., Jalal, K. F. & Boyd, J. A. (2007). An introduction to sustainable development; Earthscan Publications: London.
Sen, A.K. (2000). The ends and means of sustainability: Keynote address. The International Conference on Transition to sustainability, Tokyo.
Sheridan, G. (2010). Vietnam: Preparing the higher education sector development project (HESDP) – Project number: 4207901. Accessed from https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/project-document/63092/42079-01-vie-tacr-03.pdf on September 3rd, 2018.
Tanriogen, Z. M. (2018). The possible effects of the 4th industrial revolution on Turkish educational system. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 77, 163-184. Doi: 10.14689/ejer.2018.77.9.
Tashakkori, A. & Creswell, J. W. (2007). Developing publishable mixed methods manuscripts. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 1, 107-111. Doi: 10.1177/1558689806298644.
Vallance, S., Perkins, H. C. & Dixon, J. E. (2011). What is social sustainability? A clarification of concepts. Geoforum, 42(3), 341-348. Doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2011.01.002.
Yu, Y.; Tong, Y.; Tang, W.; Yuan, Y. & Chen, Y. (2018). Identifying spatiotemporal interactions between urbanization and eco-environment in urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, China. Sustainability, 10(1), 290. doi:10.3390/su10010290.
Wey, Wann-Ming (2018). A commentary on sustainably built environments and urban growth management. Sustainability, 10(11), 1-5. Doi: 10.3390/su10113898.
Woodscraft, S., Bacon, N., Caistor-Arendar, L. & Hackett, T. (2011). Design for social sustainability: A framework for creating thriving new communities. Social Life: London.