Last week, Arizona State University and Portland State University policy experts trained leaders from 8 Vietnamese universities on creating policies to develop project-based learning approaches. Project-based approaches help students apply book learning in real situations, making them better prepared for the real world. These universities are partners under USAID’s Building University-Industry Learning and Development through Innovation and Technology (BUILD-IT) activity. Microsoft and Fablab Saigon also shared insights on active learning experiences to make university graduates competitive on the job market. The leaders from these BUILD-IT partner universities will now begin drafting policy framework for project-based learning, in collaboration with BUILD-IT experts. So what? As USAID works to reform the higher education system in Vietnam, giving university students hands-on experience with designing and building projects will help future Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates bring actual project experience to their future employers.