Addressing the dialogue, Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Van Phuc said targets and initiatives proposed at the dialogue are in line with Vietnam's top priorities of improving quality, promoting integration and innovation and strengthening international cooperation in higher education.

The event aims to share information, exchange views and propose initiatives to establish a common higher education space in Southeast Asia, he noted.

Vietnam is being in the process of socio-economic renovation and extensive international integration, so developing high-quality human resources that meet regional and international standards is an important goal for the country, he stressed.

Deputy Minister Phuc expressed the belief that the ASEAN higher education space will help enable greater harmonisation and internationalisation of the ASEAN higher education, especially in enhancing people to people connectivity and supporting ASEAN community building.

The launch of the Roadmap is expected to contribute to the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and the strengthening of future resilience through enhanced people-to-people connectivity, and improved access and recognition of higher education in the ASEAN region. 

The roadmap was developed by the ASEAN Working Group on Higher Education Mobility, the ASEAN Secretariat, the ASEAN Foundation, and the European Union (EU) Support to Higher Education in the ASEAN Region (SHARE) Programme. Its objective is to strengthen connectivity, people-to-people exchange and knowledge transfer within ASEAN through promoting student mobility within ASEAN by 2025, and implementing ASEAN scholarships.

This roadmap is expected to be submitted to the ASEAN Summit in Cambodia in November this year.

The SHARE programme, which was launched in March 2014, is the leading higher education programme of the European Union (EU) in association with ASEAN, to support the implementation of the ASEAN Work Plan on Education.

Source: VNA