Mark A. Ashwill, Ph.D., Managing Director & Co-Founder, Capstone Education

An academic by training, an education entrepreneur & international educator by trade.

I have spent my entire career as an international educator and education entrepreneur working in the public, non-profit, and private sectors in three countries. I’m currently the managing director of Capstone Education, a full-service educational consulting company with offices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), a position I’ve held since the company’s founding in 2009.

Capstone’s institutional client- and partner-facing website, Recruit in Viet Nam, is a one-stop online student recruitment resource devoted to non-commission-based recruitment tools and techniques.

Capstone is the only educational consulting company in Vietnam, and probably the world, that works exclusively with regionally accredited institutions of higher education in the US, the gold standard of institutional accreditation in that country, and officially accredited schools in other countries.  Its unique business model addresses the needs of both institutional and individual clients.

From 2005 to 2009, I served as country director of the Institute of International Education in Vietnam.  Before that, I was director of the World Languages Institute, adjunct lecturer, and Fulbright program adviser at the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY/Buffalo).

During 1994/95, I worked as a primary researcher on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) Case Study Project in Germany, Japan, and the U.S.  I was a Research Associate at the University of Michigan’s Center for Human Growth and Development (CHGD) and a visiting scholar at the Goethe University Frankfurt and Northwestern University.

Among other work related to the Case Study Project, I edited and contributed to The Educational System in Germany: Case Study Findings and co-authored the chapter on “The Development and Implementation of Education Standards in the United States” that appeared in The Educational System in the United States:  Case Study Findings.

It was my privilege and honor to have worked with the late Dr. Harold W. Stevenson, the project director and a professor at the University of Michigan.  Dr. Stevenson was a developmental psychologist whose comprehensive studies in the 1980s showed that schoolchildren in Asia outperformed US American children often because they simply worked harder.

In 2003, I became the first US American to be awarded a Fulbright Senior Specialist Grant to Vietnam.  (Follow this link to see my Fulbright profile.) I served as an adviser to VietAbroader, a student-run, nonprofit whose slogan is Empower Vietnamese Youth, and was a member of the advisory board of Teachers for Vietnam, a U.S.-based non-profit organization.

I’ve written and presented widely on issues related to Vietnam, US-Vietnam relations, Vietnamese studying overseas, international student recruitment, accreditation, commissions-based recruitment, international student access and equity, the use of education as a tool of soft power, nationalism, global citizenship education, and the development of intercultural competence.

I am the author of Vietnam Today: A Guide to a Nation at a Crossroads (with Thái Ngọc Diệp), published in 2005 by Intercultural Press (now Nicholas Brealey Publishing).  This substantive introduction to Vietnamese culture and society has been widely cited.  Vietnam Today appeared on a list of the top 40 books about Vietnam compiled in 2013 by the Vietnam Studies Group.

In 2009, I co-authored a book chapter entitled “Developing Globally Competent Citizens:  The Contrasting Cases of the United States and Vietnam,” (with Dương Thị Hoàng Oanh) that appeared in The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence (ed. Darla Deardorff).

I’m a co-editor of Human Resource Development in Vietnam: Research and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan Asian Business Series) published in 2021.

I’ve been an external reviewer for the Comparative Education Review, published by The University of Chicago Press. I am currently one for the Journal of Studies in International Education, published by Boston College (US) and La Trobe University (Australia).

My work has been published by the BBC, The Buffalo News, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Comparative Education Review, CounterPunch, Forbes Vietnam, The Huffington Post, for which I was a blogger, International Educator (NAFSA), ICEF Monitor, Inside HigherEd, International Higher Education (Boston College), The PIE Blog, University World News, Vietnam Full Disclosure, VNExpress International, and World Education News & Reviews (WES), among others.

In Vietnam, I have been interviewed and/or quoted by the following media outlets: VTV1, 2, 4, 6, HTV, Thanh Nien, Tien Phong, Tuoi Tre, VietnamNet, Giao Duc Viet Nam, Lao Dong, Soha.vn, Saigon Times Online, Vietnam Economic Times, CPV, Vietcetera, VNExpress International, the Voice of Vietnam, Zing, among others.  My Vietnamese language publications have appeared in Soha, VNExpress and Zing, all top media outlets, as well as Tia Sang, a well-known online and print journal.

I have been interviewed and/or quoted by the following foreign (non-Vietnamese) media outlets:  Asia Times, Casper Star-Tribune (WY), The Chronicle of Higher Education, College Times, CNN International Business Traveler, CounterPunch, The Daily NNA (Japan), Financial Times (of London), Honolulu Star Bulletin (HI), ICEF Monitor, IIE Networker, IIE research publications (e.g., Globally Mobile Youth: Trends in International Secondary Students in the United States, 2013-2016), International Educator, The PIE News, TechTrends, University World News, USA Today, US News & World Report, among others.

I have presented at numerous conferences in Vietnam and the US based on submitted proposals and by invitation.  The six (6) most recent presentations – in descending chronological order – are:

• Vietnamese Student Recruitment in the New Normal Era, NAFSA annual conference, Washington, D.C. Chair and presenter. (Poster session)
• Vietnam Recruitment Seminar, NAFSA 2023, at The George Washington University.
• Vietnamese Student Recruitment in Challenging Times, NAFSA:  Association of International Educators annual conference, 29 May 2019, Washington, D.C.  Chair and presenter.  (Poster session)
• Commissions-Based International Student Recruitment Agents: Is There a Better Way?, NAFSA annual conference, 29 May 2019, Washington, D.C.  Panelist.
• 4th Annual Vietnam Recruitment Seminar, an unofficial, pre-NAFSA annual conference seminar, 27 May 2019, Washington, D.C.  (Hosted by George Washington University and sponsored by Study in the USA).
• Riding the Wave: Student Recruitment in Vietnam, an unofficial, pre-NAFSA annual conference seminar, 28 May 2018, Philadelphia, PA.  (Hosted by Drexel University English Language Center and sponsored by Study in the USA.)
• Keys to Successful Non-Commission-Based Recruitment in Vietnam, NAFSA annual conference, 2 June 2017, Los Angeles, CA.  Chair and panelist.
• Introducing the Elephant in the Room: US Nationalism, annual conference of the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA), February 2017, Washington, D.C.  Chair and panelist.

I earned a Ph.D. in Comparative and Higher Education from the SUNY/Buffalo Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, where I studied with Philip G. Altbach, Harold J. Noah and Gail P. Kelly, among others.  I hold M.A. and B.A. degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) , where I studied with Otto F. Best, Peter Beicken, and John Fuegi, among others, and the University of Delaware, where I studied with A. LeRoy Bennett, Thomas Cronin, Willard A. Fletcher, and Edmund S. Glenn, among others. I also studied, taught, and conducted research in Germany, including the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

I am a member of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), NAFSA: Association of International Educators, the General Society of Mayflower Descendants (GSMD), and Veterans for Peace (associate member). My personal email address is markashwill[AT]hotmail.com.

MAA