Developing educational institution culture contributes much to the training of learners to become adaptable and useful, moral citizens with lifelong-learning spirits and skills, with standard lifestyle, with awareness and fighting capacity, who can actively and effectively contribute to the development of local communities and of the country. First of all, the article aims to (1) outline the theoretical background of educational institution culture, (2) overview some core values and norms that are of interest in building educational institution culture in the 21st century so as to improve morality, lifestyle and lifelong learning spirits for learners (high school as well as undergraduate students), and then (3) suggest the development and promotion of core values and integrate them into all activities of the educational institutions to achieve the goal of whole-person training via the general analysis of some schools and universities in Binh Duong province. The research group summarizes some relevant contents from various documents, does discourse analysis of some statements in the institutional official websites, studies and observes some schools and universities in Binh Duong province that has attracted a lot of immigrants from many places in Vietnam. The research results show that, due to the big increase in scale and in the needs for the development of schools and universities in terms of quantity and quality, educational institution culture increasingly becomes an urgent issue in Binh Duong province, in which the values of morality, humanity and lifelong learning should be deeply and widely developed. The leaders of educational institutions need to be trained for the procedure and tools of developing educational institution culture.

Organizational culture in general and school/university culture in particular are always initiated by leaders/founders, and the positive school/university culture by its turn will help the institution reach the goal of sustainable development. The paper focuses on the following objectives (1) to give an overview of university culture from the view of organizational culture with the emphasis on the core values, an analysis of the leaders' role in shaping university culture, next (2) to explore the concensus on some cultural values officially disseminated among the member institutions of VNU-HCM so as to recommend some shared values in VNU-HCM, and finally (3) to find out the advantages and disadvantages in leading the development of university culture and to recommend ways to enhance leadership. The authors used a combination of interdisciplinary theoretical research methods and conducted a survey of 153 lecturers and 157 staff members by the use of questionnaires; they also conducted in-depth interviews with some leaders/managers and small group interviews with some lecturers, staff members from 2 VNU-HCM member universities out of the 6 previously surveyed universities. The result confirms the important role of leadership in developing university culture and shows that the values which the majority agrees upon and supports include Responsibility, Creativity, Collaboration, etc. which can be shared among VNU-HCM. In addition to the advantages, there have still been some disadvantages and limitations to be overcome by the leaders in determining and explaining the content of those published values to stakeholders for better understanding and embedding them into the strategies and operations of the institutions in reality.

In assuring and enhancing the quality of Vietnamese higher education, especially the output and outcome quality to fulfill the needs and requirements of the labor market, the curricula and training, as well as research activities, have to be continuously improved in accordance with the fast and constant changes in the globalized era, and to lead the society in various training fields. In addition, due to the massification of higher education, quite a lot of graduates who do not work in the academic or research areas need to be well equipped with a variety of skills required by different careers and labor contexts which are not approached in the academic context during the training period, especially the practical skills and experience. The paper first (1) gives an overview of theoretical background on the link between the university and the industry/labor market as well as the principles of curriculum development, development of research projects and programs in compliance with the stakeholders’ requirements. Next, it aims to (2) present some common types and activities of connecting with various employers to enhance the quality of training for lecturers, managers, and students through some case studies of some typical educational programs assessed by AUN-QA among VNU-HCM. Finally, it (3) gives some recommendations for strengthening and developing stronger and more effective links with the employers to make full use of their contributions and enhance the quality of training, research in the Vietnamese higher education institutions in the integration era.