The main challenge for HEIs is therefore to think of themselves as a development operator in relation to this political will for empowerment:

• On the one hand, each HEI carries out its activities within a territory, which gives it a social responsibility in terms of the integration of its graduates, and therefore of support systems for professional integration. In terms of the research-innovation program, this mainly involves structuring and developing projects providing operational responses to socio-economic and regional needs.
• On the other hand, each HEI must rethink its model of university governance on which it has relied for more than 20 years and which was characterized as follows: absence of a strategic watch; annual rather than multi-year planning, for lack of relevant foresight; inadequate knowledge and know-how of academic, scientific and administrative leaders and managers in university governance; lack of government initiatives and funding for training and support for strategic planning as part of a reformed university governance model.

The analysis of the challenges facing HEIs in both Cambodia and Vietnam led the University of Hanoi (HANU - P1) and the Asia-Pacific Regional Directorate (AUF-DRAP - P3) of the University Agency of la Francophonie (AUF) to launch a survey, in June 2018, among the 7 HEIs that have been members of the AUF for more than 15 years: Hanoi University of Architecture (UAH - P11), University of Social and Human Sciences of '' National University of Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh (USSH - P9), University of Economics and Law of the National University of Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh (UED - P17), University of Health Sciences of Cambodia (USS - P8), Hanoi Higher School of Transport and Communication (ESTC - P13), Polytechnic Institute of the University of Danang (IPD - P5), and Cambodia Institute of Technology (ITC - P15).

This survey made it possible to identify challenges common to the 8 Cambodian and Vietnamese HEIs, and therefore the priority axes of strengthening their university governance to be put in place in a context of empowerment: becoming aware of the changes and ruptures affecting university systems. the region, and particularly their impact on the governance of each HEI; have a strategic vision over specific periods, which commits decisions and allocates the resources of an HEI; articulating the strategic visions and social responsibility of a HEI through the impact of its decisions on society and the challenges it faces; rethink an open university governance model that includes stakeholders in a participatory logic: political and socio-economic actors, but also those from civil society who identify with this approach.

Following this survey, a meeting of 8 Cambodian and Vietnamese HEIs was organized in Hanoi (August 14-15, 2018) in order to jointly define the overall and specific orientation of the project, and thus structure it into priority axes: determination the degree and characteristics of the autonomy of HEIs within the framework of a self-diagnosis to be constructed; overall analysis of the external and internal environment of the organization of HEIs; construction of the strategic planning system; definition of the multi-year action plan as part of the implementation of the priority actions identified; transversal system aimed at strengthening skills and supporting change.