Vietnam's technology skills set ranks second in Asia Pacific

In its report published last week, world-wide online learning platform Coursera benchmarked 60 countries and 10 industries for business (the practice and day-to-day running of a business), technology (the creation, maintenance, and scaling of computer systems and software), and data science (the decision making and/or powering underlying products and services) skills.

Coursera said these are its three most popular domains in terms of enrollments and "encapsulate the skills most crucial to the future of work."

Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, said the GSI report ranks how economies and industries are performing on key skills based on proficiency. The company looked at the 65 million learners on the platform, analyzing performance data of those from the past 12 months.

The report gave Vietnam's technology skills a "competitive" rating, the second highest proficiency levels, only behind "cutting-edge" and above "emerging" and "lagging."

It said the nation's strongest skill in the technology domain is operating systems (Android and iOS software development) at competitive level. The country's skills in computer networking (blockchain and wireless networking), human computer interaction (user interface and machine translation), databases (relational database, key value database), security engineering (cyber attacks and cryptography), and software engineering (software development and algorithms) received emerging rating in proficiency level.

Out of the top four countries in Asia Pacific that received the highest rating for the technology domain, Vietnam outperformed Japan and Australia to finished in second place and only trailed New Zealand. The nation scooped 22nd place in the global ranking.

In the business domain, Vietnam ranked 33th in the world and seventh in Asia Pacific.

However, Vietnam lagged in the data science domain, trailing regional peers at 13th place in Asia Pacific and 53th in the world.

Switzerland is the only country ranked in the top three across all domains, finishing first in business, second in data science and third in technology. Russia topped the technology and data science domains.

Coursera said the global pandemic has impacted the lives of over 555 million workers and 200 million higher education students around the world.

"Workforce recovery in a post-pandemic world relies on broad-base re-skilling. Institutions must lead this effort by providing learners with equal access to skills needed for the jobs of the future," Maggioncalda said.

The company's data indicated every skill proficiency percent gained in a country’s average proficiency (across domains) is associated with a $600 increase in per capita GDP.