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place a huge strain on Vietnam's public finances, even if, as is proposed, much of the growth takes place in the private sector and is paid for entirely by tuition fees, supplemented by land grants and taxation concessions from the state. Even this prospect raises further questions: how are so many students going to afford private higher education? what baseline standards of quality will be applied to the private sector? what is the intended balance between “for-profit” and “not-for-profit” providers? Another notable feature of the agenda is the lack of a sense of priority regarding of the objectives to be achieved by 2020. It is of concern that quality assurance and institutional accreditation, for example, are not close to the top of a priority list for the system. The experience of other countries in the region should be enough to alert Vietnam to the importance of strict institutional accreditation processes during a phase of rapid expansion, especially one that relies heavily on growth in the private sector. Finally, it is difficult to see how Vietnam will achieve institutional autonomy in the higher education system, given the relative lack of an effective governance infrastructure across the system, and given also the precarious position of university rectors, whose authority it seems will remain forever circumscribed by Communist Party policies and processes and a state disposition to govern by means of tight regulatory control. Vietnam is not lacking in energy and commitment. Its 2020 vision for higher education may, however, be a case of trying to do too much, too quickly.