There is evidence of a rapid increase in the returns to education in Vietnam in the 1990s and
2000s. There was a substantial change in education policy in the 2000s, especially opening up
education opportunities for education providers to expand educational facilities and training.
These changes could lead to a decline in the returns to education. To provide up-to-date
estimates of the returns, we re-visit the returns using updated large-scale survey data to 2014.
We apply the Heckman selection estimators to correct for selection bias and find that the
return to education in Vietnam increased quickly up to the global financial crisis in
2008/2009 and declined sharply thereafter. This raises at least two questions: is the highereducated
labour force oversupplied or is there a large distortion in the labour market?