VietNamNet Bridge – The Vietnamese university accreditations have been relying on foreign organizations. Meanwhile, they do not have enough information to do this.

Where are Vietnamese schools in the world’s school map?

4icu.org University Web Ranking has recently released the list of Vietnamese accredited universities. The Hanoi National University tops the list, followed by the HCM City University of Technology, Can Tho University, HCM City Agriculture and Forestry, HCM City Information Technology University and the Hanoi Economics University.

Analysts have noted that the 56 ranked Vietnamese universities include a lot of non-state owned schools, such as Lac Hong, Duy Tan and Van Lang.

They have also found that the Vietnamese most prestigious schools have been absent in the list of top 200 universities in the world. Meanwhile, the other regional countries all have seen their representatives in the list. The Singapore National University ranks the 44th in the top 200, Indonesian Gadjah Mada the 198th.

The report by SCI mago Institutions Rankings showed that of the 2,740 universities and research institutes worldwide accredited by August 2013, there were only four Vietnamese units – the Academy of Science and Technology which had 1,479 scientific research works made public, the HCM City National University (900), the Hanoi University of Technology (610) and the Hanoi National University (588).

Prior to that, in Webometrics’ report, the Hanoi National University ranked 187th out of the 7,000 Asian universities, and 907th in the world’s ranking. Meanwhile, the other Vietnamese schools ranked the 1,665th and lower.

Dr. Nguyen Tien Dung, Head of the Strategy Development Division of the HCM City University of Technique Education, noted that university accreditation in Vietnam is not compulsory; therefore, the accreditations have been made mostly by foreign organizations.

Each of the organizations focuses on specific criteria to rank Vietnamese schools. Some of them rank schools just by counting the numbers of visitors to the schools’ websites.

Some educators have agreed that a lot of rankings are unreliable because the organizations don’t have enough information about Vietnamese schools.

It’s difficult to measure the quality of services

The leaders of Vietnamese schools admitted that if their school names appear in the well-known rankings, this would help polish their images in the eyes of international institutions.

Therefore, instead of keeping indifferent to the accreditation lists, Vietnamese schools have been advised to be cooperative by providing enough information about themselves to the world’s accreditation organizations.

Dr. Nguyen Kim Dung, Deputy Head of the Education Research Institute, belonging to the HCM City University of Education, noted that it is difficult to measure the training quality of Vietnamese schools via their websites, because the schools have never paid appropriate attention to develop the websites and update information.

Dung said that the information on the website is just the pieces of news to advertise themselves. Meanwhile, the information useful for students cannot be found on the websites.

Vietnamese schools have been asked by the Ministry of Education and Training to accredit themselves and submit reports to the ministry. However, Dr. Nguyen Tien Dung believes that the schools need to be accredited by independent organizations.

Educators have doubts about the feasibility of the Vietnam’s program on having at least one school to be listed among the world’s top 200 universities by 2020.

NLD