Addressing the event on August 18, which was jointly organised by VNU and the ASEAN University Network (AUN), Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha said Vietnam’s higher education has made great strides towards autonomy, enhancing accreditation, publicity of education quality, and approaching the 4th Industrial Revolution.
So far, as many as 160 Vietnamese higher education institutions and more than 300 training programmes have been accredited by prestigious domestic and international accreditation organisations, he noted.
Higher education institutions have been accessing university governance tools to identify their competence, Minister Nha added.
According to the minister, Vietnam has three educational institutions named within the list of 1,000 leading education institutions in the world. The country’s higher education is ranked 68th out of nearly 200 countries and territories worldwide.
However, local universities still show limitations in operation and management, especially in evaluating the quality of education and ensuring transparency, he said.
He stressed the need to have quality management tools in order to improve university governance capacity both at the macro and micro levels, especially to compare quality assurance indicators among higher education institutions.
UPM is a data and analysis centre, which can provide consultancy and support to the national higher education system, as well as to national and regional higher education institutions, he said.
Higher education institutions can use UPM to self-evaluate their performance, at the same time use it as a tool for strategic management, brand development, and partner development, he went on.
UPM was developed by a research team of VNU under the sponsorship of the national educational science programme chaired by the Ministry of Education and Training.
It aims to help higher education institutions to define and manage their strategic goals, towards standing in the top 100 universities in Asia.
Nearly 40 universities in Vietnam and in other ASEAN member nations have so far voluntarily applied the UPM system for quality evaluation.
Executive Director of the ASEAN University Network (AUN) Choltis Dhirathiti said the Secretariat of AUN supports UPM because the system helps open a new approach in the field of university quality evaluation, with eight groups of criteria and 54 highly synthetic indicators.
UPM can provide reliable information serving the comprehensive comparison and evaluation of the quality of universities, he said.
Participants at the workshop discussed issues related to vision and strategy of educational institutions based on indicators of the 4th industrial revolution and sustainable development, university governance based on social impact assessment, development of educational ecosystem and data management platforms, among others.
