| Summary: | Vietnamese Universities Transform Agriculture Curricula and Research. This special issue of TROPICULTURA is a fruit of the long-term collaboration of several Vietnamese universities and Wageningen University & Research (WUR). Most of the papers report on activities that were carried out by the NICHE-VNM-105/ACCCU project since 2012. ACCCU supported three Vietnamese universities: Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry (HUAF), Hong Duc University (HDU) and Vietnam National University of Agriculture (VNUA) to move away from "learning to recite" to "learning to perform" in agricultural curricula. Simultaneously, where most appropriate, ACCCU integrated gender and climate change issues in some courses. Next to WUR, the project was supported by Maastricht School of Management (MSM), Can Tho University (CTU) and the Regional Office for Asia of SNV (Netherlands Development Organisation). At the three universities, in total seven curricula were adjusted: Agronomy at HDU, Aquaculture at both HUAF & VNUA, Environmental Sciences at VNUA, Horticulture at both HUAF & VNUA, and Land Management at HUAF. The first two papers discuss the curriculum reforms and provide recommendations on developing students' competences to enable them to perform in society. The present tendency of universities to cater to the "learning to recite" curricula has contributed to a rising unemployment rate among their graduates. At present, employers prefer hiring undergraduates and give them training while they are doing their actual jobs, and then retain the best performers. The authors recommend that government enunciate clear strategies for an educational system that crafts out critical thinking skills as early as in the primary and secondary schools, and prescribe overall learning outcomes instead of lists of courses. Such learning outcomes will allow universities to aggregate closely related courses in interdisciplinary modules, which may, at the same time, prevent repetitions and allow active skill and competency learning activities. However, such undertaking requires training of the lecturers' pedagogical skills and raising their awareness on the necessity to teach skills and attitude. The other papers and the abstracts report on climate change adaptation research. The first describes a seven-step approach that identifies responses to climate change impacts. This is followed by four results of this approach: the paper on Melon cultivation and the abstracts on a water-sharing mechanism, sedge culture and three adaptations in the Mekong delta. The remaining four papers present the results of studies focusing on specific climate change adaptation and mitigation measures: autonomous adaptation by sugar cane growers, breeding of saline-tolerant climbing perch, pollution mitigation from shrimp farming wastewater and Payment for Ecosystem Services for forest conservation to compensate CO2 emissions. The decision making for adaptation of pangasius farming is an invited paper from a lecturer of Nha Trang University who defended his PhD at WUR. In these studies, the lecturers were able to strengthen their skills in conducting stakeholders' consultations and other participatory research methods. Part of the methods and results documenting lessons and actual field experience were captured in video clips as support materials for classroom purposes. Although long and winding, the journey towards transforming Vietnamese agriculture curricula from theory to skills-based has started, and lecturers are using their experiences from field work in their classes. In the near future, students will be better able to respond to the demands of the World of Work in the region.
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