The U.S. has a more than 100-year-old history in accreditation. The purpose of accreditation is to serve the public interest. In order to improve the accreditation system to foster the philosophy of continuous quality improvement, most of U.S. regional accreditation agencies embedded an institutional quality plan to its current accreditation standards. Similarly, Vietnam also used accreditation as a major quality management tools for almost twenty years. This research study examined the implementation of the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) from a U.S. research university in the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools-Commission on Colleges region (SACSCOC). Comparative approach is the major research methodology to explore data for this study. The research conducted open-ended interviews with ten Vietnamese educators in the accreditation field to explore their perspectives about the implementation of a quality enhancement plan (QEP) in Vietnam accreditation context. Before doing the interviews, all participants received an experience summary from a U.S. research university to implement two QEPs for the past ten years and used it as a background for the understanding and interviewing. The research findings indicated Vietnamese educators had different ideas on the feasibility of QEP in Vietnam institutional accreditation. Since the philosophy of QEP is similar to the philosophy of quality assurance process – Plan Do Check Act (PDCA), Vietnamese educators made some recommendations to implement it in Vietnam context. In addition, the Vietnamese educators made some implications to ministry of education and training, centers for accreditation and Vietnam higher education institutions to embed this innovation into Vietnam accreditation system.
