Deputy Prime Minister Vương Đình Huệ meets the management and staff of the Việt Nam National University-Hồ Chí Minh City on Saturday. VNS Photo Gia Lộc

HCM CITY— Member universities of the Việt Nam National University- Hồ Chí Minh City should seek financial autonomy, which is indispensable to their development, Deputy Prime Minister Vương Đình Huệ has said.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of VNUHCM’s new academic year on Saturday, he said "higher education autonomy is a global phenomenon".

"Countries have quality of training in higher education commensurate with their level of autonomy, and the level is high in developed countries," he said.

The Government continues to provide a lot of funds to the VNUHCM though it is fully autonomous, according to Huệ.

The VNUHCM should take the initiative to outline full autonomy plans for its member universities many of which are already partly autonomous, he said.

Its University of Information Technology and University of Economics and Law, for instance, have sufficient financial capacity to be fully autonomous.

Nguyễn Hoàng Tú Anh, the rector of the University of Information Technology, said her university would like full autonomy and had applied for it.

But with a Government resolution on amending the way public tertiary educational institutions operate expiring in 2017, the university had to wait for a new resolution allowing full autonomy, she said.

But she also suggested that the Government should devolve authority to the VNUHCM to grant autonomy to universities while waiting for the next resolution.

Assoc Prof Dr Nguyễn Tiến Dũng, rector of the University of Economics and Law, said his university too wanted full autonomy because of the many benefits it offered like allowing payment of higher salaries to attract talent.

Assoc Prof Dr Huỳnh Thành Đạt, the VNUHCM’s president, said member universities had high demand for quality human resources, but complained they  could not attract talent due to the Government’s salary policies.

Anh said her university had lost a number of professors and doctors to other universities because of its low salaries.

The Deputy PM also instructed the VNUHCM to develop its schools such as the School of Medicine into universities since their quality was good enough.

It could solicit investment from the private sector under public-private partnership mode to build a hospital owned by the School of Medicine so that the public could get one more hospital and students could learn practically. VNS