Vietnamese Career-Trajectory Case Taxonomy: A Six-Type Synthesis with Field-by-Field Application across Major Undergraduate Degrees for Layer-I Series

This paper produces a six-trajectory case taxonomy for Vietnamese post-undergraduate-degree career patterns and applies it field-by-field across the nine major Vietnamese degree clusters. The taxonomy synthesises international careerresearch literature — Savickas career-construction theory, Hall protean-career, Arthur-Rousseau boundaryless-career, BriscoeHall-DeMuth protean-boundaryless two-by-two, Sullivan-Baruch advances-in-careers review, Rodrigues-Guest career-patterns, Lent-Brown-Hackett social-cognitive career theory, Holland vocational fit, plus the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook and Cedefop European Skills Forecast as international comparators — with the Vietnamese labour-market evidence base assembled in I3.2 (GSO LFS, MOLISA, VietnamWorks, JobStreet, TopCV, Anphabe, TopDev, ILO Vietnam, World Bank, ADB) plus sectorspecific Vietnamese sources covering medical-resident, publicteaching, and legal-profession pathways. Six trajectory types are specified: T1 linear-ladder, T2 lateral-hop, T3 founder-andfreelance, T4 field-exit, T5 specialist-depth, T6 internationalpivot. Each is given a structural-driver definition, characteristic 5- / 10- / 15-year endpoints, common exit routes, and an illustrative profile. The taxonomy is then applied field-byfield across CNTT and information technology, economics and finance, engineering, medicine and pharmacy, education and teacher training, foreign-language studies, law, basic sciences, and arts. The substantive contribution is the field × trajectory × endpoint matrix, which names the dominant trajectory types per field, characteristic 5- / 10- / 15-year endpoints in role-andsalary-band terms, common pivots, and work-life patterns. The matrix is calibrated to displace the dominant single-trajectory romanticisations of Vietnamese popular career-guidance content. It feeds into the I3.1 major-decision framework at Step 4 (labourmarket reality check, surfacing endpoint-distribution rather than starting-wage point estimates) and Step 5 (exploration heuristics, distinguishing reversible-choice fields from specialist-credentiallocked fields), and into I4.x skill-investment by identifying which skills compound under each trajectory type and which compress under the AI-disruption overlay from I4.3. Per program scope, no cohort empirics; literature and secondary-source synthesis only. VN salary-trajectory data are partial and gaps are documented; no specific salary predictions are issued, only documented-range bands.