VietNamNet Bridge - HCM City National University and Hanoi National University have been listed in QS Ranking 2019. 

Two Vietnamese universities are listed in QS top 1,000 schools

The former is in the group of schools ranked in the 701st to 750th category, while the latter was in the 801st-1,000th group. 

According to Nguyen Quoc Chinh, director of the Testing and Training Quality Assessment Center, the school provided figures to the organization for the last two years and the ‘results were commensurate with our ability’.

Asked if the school could list itself among the world’s top 200 by 2020, Chien said this was an ‘impossible mission’.

Having its universities ranked among the world’s top 200 is the goal set by Vietnam’s strategy on university development released more than 10 years ago.

Nguyen Huu Duc, deputy director of the Hanoi National University, said “the achievements gained in the last few years are modest, but they demonstrate important progress”.

Education managerial officers believe that the potential of every country is not measured by the number of modern aircraft and battleships they have, but by the number of excellent universities. 

Meanwhile, Le Van Ut from Ton Duc Thang University commented that the rankings based on comments dictated by feelings are not objective.

“50 percent of criteria in QS ranking come from the nominations by experts and employers in the world,” he said.

He also noted that the assessment of 20 percent of research criteria based on Scopus citations is not a reasonable solution because Scopus citations have different quality.

Ut emphasized that there are tens of thousands of universities in the world, but only over 4,000 schools provide materials to QS. 

Meanwhile, there are objective rankings which rank schools without data provided by schools. 

At present, four organizations, Academic Ranking of World Universities (China), CWTS Leiden Ranking (the Netherlands), Center for World University Rankings (UAE) and NTU Ranking (Taiwan), rank universities based on international publications.

However, Ut still believes that two Vietnamese universities in QS’ top 1,000 has ‘certain significance’.

Le Truong Tung, rector of FPT University, said the presence in the top 1,000 is an important milestone showing that Vietnam’s universities have accepted to be assessed in accordance with global standards, though their positions are still low.

Vo Dinh Bay from the HCMC University of Technology, one of 83,000 scientists QS invited to assess schools, believes that QS is a reasonable choice for Vietnam’s schools, though some analysts think it is not as difficult to appear in QS ranking as it is in others.

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