VietNamNet Bridge - Only one university education establishment has been found meeting 56 out of 61 criteria in the accreditation campaign carried out by four authorized accreditation centers.

Vietnam has no school listed in the world's top 500 in prestigious rankings

The centers examined 122 universities and academies out of total 234 universities from January 2016 to May 2018 based on 10 standards and 61 criteria.

Most of the schools, or 117 training establishments, have been recognized as meeting standards, while five have failed. However, this doesn’t mean Vietnam’s has high tertiary education quality.  

The figures collected from the accreditation show big problems of Vietnam’s tertiary education. Forty-three percent of schools have lecturing staff who do not meet standards, while 55 percent do not have enough lecturers.

Twenty five training establishments, or 21.4 percent, meet 49 criteria, while 98 schools could not meet nine or more criteria, accounting for 83.8 percent of total schools accredited. 117 schools meet quality standards, but only one of them satisfied a high number of criteria (56/61).

“These are worrying figures which truly reflect the problems of Vietnam’s tertiary education, because most of the accredited schools are ranked relatively high in the system,” commented Prof Banh Tien Long, former Deputy Minister of Education and Training.

“This explains why Vietnam has no school listed in the world’s top 500 in prestigious rankings,” he said.

Long and his co-workers pointed out that schools need to focus on improving the university administration and training curricula. At least 15.4 percent of schools did not have the regular-training curricula designed in accordance with regulations.

Sixty five schools have been found not implementing the periodic assessment of their training curricula and curricula improvement. Forty four percent of schools are believed as not paying much attention to the method and process of assessing students’ learning results.

Thirty three schools did not collect opinions from learners, employers and involved parties about their training quality and curricula. 

The accreditation also shows the seriousness of the lecturer shortage, which has existed for many years. In some training programs, there is only one lecturer for every 60 students. 

In fact, the figures and the warning about tertiary education quality are not a surprise at all. MOET in May inspected some training establishments and found similar problems.

Under current laws, each student needs 2.8 square meters of floor area. Meanwhile, the figure was 2.35 square meters at the Finance & Marketing University, and 0.97 square meters at the Hanoi Finance & Banking University.

Long’s report and other research works all show that scientific research is the biggest weak point of Vietnam’s universities. Prof Nguyen Van Tuan from Garvan Institute pointed out that 80 percent of articles are implemented by Vietnamese scientists in cooperation with foreign colleagues.

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