External stakeholders have increasingly participated in instructional and training activities in higher education; however, their contribution has not yet been adequately documented, especially in non-Western university contexts. This article reports a study that examined external stakeholders' roles and factors influencing their participation in these roles in developing generic skills (GS) for students at six Vietnamese universities of different institutional contexts. Data, which were primarily collected by semi-structured interviews with 69 university leaders, academics and staff members of the Youth Union and its associates, were analysed using a content analysis approach. The analysis showed that external stakeholders participated in multiple roles in executing GS policy, including consulting relevant GS for curriculum modification, training students in these skills, providing and supervising student internships, and evaluating the effectiveness of the skills development programmes. The analysis indicated that their participation was influenced by their interests in these roles, university location and university status. University leadership, which appeared to be driven by contextual factors such as several reforms concurrently taking place, curriculum autonomy, and regulations about staff appointment, was also found to influence extremal stakeholders' participation.