The Viet Nam National University-Ha Noi (VNU) recently launched a higher education comparative ranking system developed by Viet Nam named “University Performance Metrics” (UPM) at an international workshop in Ha Noi.

Addressing the event, which was jointly organised by VNU and the ASEAN University Network (AUN), Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha said Viet Nam’s higher education has made strong strides towards autonomy, enhancing accreditation, publicity of education quality, and approaching the 4^th 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, Nha added.

According to the minister, Viet Nam has three educational institutions named in 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 and ensuring the transparency of the education quality, he said.

Nha stressed the need to have quality management tools in order to improve university governance capacity both at the macro and micro level, 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.

Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha speaks at the workshop (Photo: https://moet.gov.vn/)

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 from 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 to standing in the top 100 universities in Asia.

Nearly 40 universities in Viet Nam 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 up 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 4^th industrial revolution and sustainable development, university governance based on social impact assessment, development  of educational ecosystem and data management platform, among others.

Source: VNA