Improving Vietnam’s higher education

The UPM ranking system categorises higher education institutions in eight disciplines

Young Vietnamese contestants gave a spectacular showing at the 2020 International Olympiad in Informatics last Wednesday by bagging four medals (one gold, two silver, and a bronze). Their performance brought Vietnam to ninth place out of 87 countries, validating the country’s strong push for IT education to get its workforce Industry 4.0-ready.

The turn towards nurturing technological skills is apparent in the many changes in Vietnam’s education system, with the launch of the University Performance Metrics’ (UPM) ranking system a month ago a major effort facilitating students and employers in assessing higher education institutions in accordance with more modern standards.

The UPM ranking system is the very first comparative one for domestic and Asian universities. Funded by the Ministry of Education and Training, the ranking assesses how higher education institutions measure up to the needs of Industry 4.0 and will serve as a tool to benchmark with Asia’s top 100 universities. The UPM does not focus on the top 1,000 universities in the world which account for about 3 per cent of all higher education institutions worldwide, but instead on the other 97 per cent (more than 28,000 universities).

According to Prof. Nguyen Huu Duc, former vice president of Vietnam National University (VNU) Hanoi, leader of the UPM research team, the previous ranking criteria for universities focus only on traditional academic and human resources performance while disregarding the more dynamic trends underpinning the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

“UPM employs a star-based rating which will avoid placing universities above or below each other and instead put them into larger groups,” Duc said.

The UPM rates universities from one to five stars based on their score in eight categories namely strategic governance, education, research, innovation, innovation ecosystem, IT infrastructure, internationalisation, and community services.

The 5-star universities will be those with a solid international recognition and be able to qualify for a place among the top 100 universities in Asia.

A 4-star rating will vouch for universities’ reputation not only in their respective countries but in the region, and 3-star universities will be those with a role in the national higher education system and can facilitate student mobility in ASEAN countries.

Besides handing out star ratings, UPM has revealed some stark differences between Vietnam’s and regional universities. Specifically, universities in ASEAN pay a great deal more attention to startups, innovation, and digital transformation in their strategic management than Vietnamese universities.

Since its launch, nearly 30 universities in Vietnam and other ASEAN member nations have voluntarily applied the UPM system for quality measurement, with three Vietnamese and one Thai university achieving a 5-star rating in the Research University category and five Vietnamese and one institution from the Philippines ranked four stars (the highest so far) in the Applied University bracket.

In recent years, many Vietnamese universities have consistently achieved high marks in prestigious rankings in the world and the region. Last week, VNU Hanoi was named in 801-1,000 bracket for the world’s top universities by Times Higher Education for the second year running.

In early 2020, four leading universities in Vietnam – VNU Hanoi, VNU Ho Chi Minh City, Duy Tan University, and Ton Duc Thang University – were ranked in the top 2,000 universities by the Center for World University Rankings out of nearly 25,000 universities worldwide. In August, Ton Duc Thang University has become the only Vietnamese representatives in the top 800 of the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2020.

Despite the successes of leading domestic universities, many compatriots are still ranked very low compared to other regional and international universities.

“A strong ranking is not only good for brand identity but also for surveying the development situation of the education industry, so it is necessary to invest in quality improvements,” said Prof. Nguyen Huu Duc.

The introduction of the UPM system will help higher education institutions define and manage strategic goals, aiming to make it into the top 100 Asian universities.

The system is backed up by a powerful data and analysis centre, which can provide useful consultancy and support to the national higher education system, as well as to national and regional higher education institutions which can use UPM criteria to evaluate their own performance, and at the same time as a tool for strategic management, brand development, and partner development.

It will also provide learners with reliable information about universities to enable them to pick the best schools, fields, and career paths in accordance with their capabilities, strengths, and aspirations.