Psychological Hardiness in Learning and Quality
of College Life of Business Students: Evidence
from Vietnam
Abstract Vietnam’s continuing economic transformation has sharply increased the
demand for highly-qualified business graduates. Vietnamese universities have responded to
this increase in demand by improving the quality of their programs and raising their
performance standards. The degree to which high-quality competitive programs increase
students’ satisfaction with their educational experience is determined by their psychological
hardiness in learning, their learning motivation, and their assessments of the
functional value of business education. This study gathered survey data from a convenience
sample of 1,024 business students in Vietnam, then validated measures of four
constructs: Quality of College Life, psychological hardiness in learning, learning motivation,
and perceived functional value of business education. The relationships among the
constructs were estimated by Structural Equation Modeling. The results demonstrate that
psychological hardiness in learning and learning motivation have statistically significant
positive impacts on students’ perceived Quality of College Life. The impacts are significantly
stronger for students with higher assessments of the functional value of a business
education. These findings suggest that universities could enhance the Quality of College
Life and academic performance by offering programs to cultivate students’ psychological
hardiness in learning and their learning motivation, and by providing them with objective
information about the functional value of business careers.