Ngo Tien Nhat, a researcher at the Education Quality Assurance Institute under the Hanoi National University, said that there are two kinds of university rankings,  automatic ranking and ranking based on registrations.

In 2018-2019, Vietnam’s universities began appearing in the world’s rankings based on registrations. Nhat said the number of local universities registering rankings has increased, but just slightly.

“In the prestigious rankings such as QS, THE, ARWU and THE Impact Ranking, there are less than 10 university names,” he commented. “This is because most schools think it is very difficult to be ranked."

Nhat found that the figures of schools in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are relatively high.

“For those countries, having universities ranked is a criterion for schools to explain to society where they are standing in the world’s and regional maps of universities,” he said.

Among the Vietnamese universities which have been ranked, the research team found that the scores given to assess the ratios of number of lecturers to number of students at most schools are all lower than other regional schools. Nhat explained that Vietnam’s ranked schools all have large scale, with over 12,000 students, so it is more difficult to have higher ratios than small-scale schools.

The indicator about the percentage of international students is also lower, which is attributed to the special characteristics of Vietnam’s training curricula. As Vietnamese language is used at schools, it is more difficult to attract foreign students.

However, Vietnam is appreciated in one factor – enrollment. The Hanoi and HCM City National Universities both have long standing disciplinary prestige and have good international research networks.

Nhat believes that in ranking universities, the ones with large training scale and multi-disciplinary majors hold the advantage, because the rankings appreciate the balance between natural and social sciences, healthcare and education, etc.

Meanwhile, smaller schools which want to be ranked should focus on increasing research frequency and quality, and paying attention to the internationalization trend by recruiting more international lecturers and use curricula attracting international learners.

Nhat said schools need to choose suitable rankings based on their abilities and advantages. The most important thing is how schools will use the results of the rankings to improve themselves.

Thuy Nga