The Hanoi University of Science and Technology and the Vietnam National University, Hanoi have been listed among the Times Higher Education’s (THE) list of top 1,000.

Ton Duc Thang University has been listed among the universities ranked 901st to 1,000th in Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s ranking.

Meanwhile, the Vietnam National University, Hanoi and the Vietnam National University, HCM City found their names in Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) top 1000 ranking.

Vietnam has reached the goal of having four universities listed among the top 1,000 six years earlier than planned.

Nguyen Quoc Chinh, director of the Examination and Training Quality Assessment Center under the Vietnam National University, HCM City, commented that Vietnam’s universities now can assert their quality with recognition fromthe world.

Some of Vietnam’s universities have found their names in prestigious rankings of the world’s best universities.

Le Truong Tung, president of FPT University, while lauding the new achievements, commented that the number of schools listed in prestigious rankings remains modest compared with the Vietnamese population.

Vietnam has nearly 100 million people out of 7 billion people all over the world, and it should have 14 universities listed in top 1000 rankings. This means that Vietnam needs to have 10 more schools in the rankings by 2025. The schools in top 1000 should improve to get higher grades and find their names in top 800 and top 500.

According to Hoang Minh Son, rector of the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, most of the rankings attach importance to achievements in scientific research, while paying less attention to training quality and social impact.

“In THE’s ranking, the index in research and citations account for 60 percent of total scores. Even when assessing the teaching quality, THE considers the scale of PhD training (8.25 percent) and the opinions of scholars with high research achievements (15 percent), i.e. it indirectly reflects the schools’ scientific research capability,” Son commented.

“If counting the indexes in knowledge transfer and international cooperation, one would see that the criteria which have direct or indirect relations with scientific research account for up to 90 percent,” he said.

Hoang Ngoc Vinh, former director of the Professional Education Department under the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), raised a question about what Vietnam needs to do to mobilize internal and international resources to improve current grades.

Strengthening cooperation with well-known universities in the world and international experts and carrying out R&D projects are the ways to improve the grades of Vietnam’s universities. 

Le Huyen

Vietnamese universities listed in THE World University Ranking

Two Vietnamese universities have been selected for the first time in Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020.