The Hà Nội campus of Vietnam National University (VNU). The institution has been selected for development into one of the country's most elite universities by 2030. — Photo baotintuc.vn

HÀ NỘI — A plan to stratify the higher education network and develop universities with unique strengths was revealed by the Ministry of Education and Training on Monday.

Education officials and university representatives gathered at a conference in Hà Nội to discuss the plan.

It is one of several steps being taken to actualise goals set in the Politburo’s Resolution 71 on creating breakthroughs in education and training, as well as in the Government's the Higher Education Development Strategy and the master plan for building a higher education institution network.

Speaking at the event, Deputy Minister of Education and Training Lê Quân said that quality must become a keyword and an inherent value in Việt Nam’s higher education system.

“Quality should not be defined solely by each institution, but must align with standards that meet the development needs of the country and the world,” he said.

While Việt Nam has a high proportion of students graduating with honours, there are still graduates who remain unemployed, or work in fields unrelated to their majors, preventing them from fully using their abilities.

To fix this, higher education needs to shift from degree-based training and recruitment to an assessment of competence, focusing on what students can actually do after graduation, Quân said.

On the other hand, the system will also be stratified to meet different development needs, he added.

Some higher education institutions will be given the opportunity to focus on boosting their unique strengths.

The education ministry will develop a set of criteria to screen and select these institutions to develop into elite or excellent universities across different disciplinary groups, according to Quân.

Selected institutions will be required to clearly define their admissions and graduation standards, training processes and conditions for ensuring student quality. They may also register and select their areas of strength for development.

The criteria will not be rigid and applied to all schools, Quân said. Instead, the country’s needs will be identified in a stage-based roadmap for the 2026-30 period, from which each institution can develop their specific strengths accordingly.

A key requirement of this strategy is that institutions concentrate resources on strategic areas rather than spreading them too thinly, Quân noted.

“Universities need to take on challenging tasks and reallocate resources to establish their excellence and key areas of specialisation,” he said.

The stratification of the higher education network has also been studied by the ministry’s Department of Higher Education, said department director Nguyễn Tiến Thảo.

According to the department’s strategy for higher education development through 2035 and to 2045, in the next decade, Việt Nam aims to establish a group of three to five elite universities that will focus on cutting-edge research, international competitiveness and core innovation.

A group of 25-30 key institutions will be responsible for training skilled workers that will provide leadership in their respective regions and sectors.

The remaining institutions will focus on practical, career-oriented training.

“The stratification is designed to be dynamic and competitive, involving periodic assessments linked to each institution's mission, objectives, key performance indicators, resources and outputs,” said Thảo.

“The guiding principle is that institutions will be allowed greater autonomy, but that will be accompanied by greater accountability.”

According to vice president of Vietnam National University Hà Nội Đào Thanh Trường, Prime Minister Lê Minh Hưng has approved the institution for development into an elite research university by 2030. Goals set include 80 per cent of its academic staff holding doctoral degrees and research in specific fields, such as artificial intelligence and semiconductor development, ranked among the world's top 100.

“Becoming an elite university requires a qualitative transformation,” he said. “We will have to shift from fragmented operations to integrating systemic strength, from scaling up to prioritising quality and talent development, and from merely generating academic results to creating social impact.”

To reach these overall goals, VNU proposed that the Government and education ministry allocate resources based on specific tasks and requirements, while simultaneously establishing systems to identify, nurture and enable institutions to collaborate and leverage their strengths. — VNS