Education & Times – On the 14th November, the Ministry of Education and Training hosted a Roundtable on Classification of Higher Education Institutions in Ho Chi Minh City. The event was attended by Vice Minister Nguyen Van Phuc.
Vice Minister Nguyen Van Phuc giving a speech at the Roundtable.
Participants at the roundtable included representatives from the Australian Consulate-General Ho Chi Minh City, Deputy Director of Higher Education Department – Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy, representatives of 30 universities from across the country, and national and international experts in higher education.
In his opening remarks, Vice Minister Nguyen Van Phuc stressed: “The promulgated higher education program standards will help universities to become more effective. The biggest and ultimate objective is to promote quality assurance and to provide universities with freedom to develop a wide diversity of training programs and to integrate internationally.”
According to the Vice Minister, the expected training program standards will play an important role in achieving quality standards in university education in Vietnam, and will replace the existing training program framework. Universities will now be required to make their own training programs to suit their particular contexts. Therefore, training program standards for different training categories are required to replace of the previous program framework.
The Vice Minister further added that the development of a Circular on training program standards for specific disciplines/groups of disciplines should be carried out by universities specializing in those areas, in consultation with employer associations and related stakeholders. The Circular will then be appraised by the Ministry of Education and Training and will inform the promulgation of training program standards for relevant disciplines.
The Roundtable attracts many national and international scientists and lecturers
The development of training program standards requires constructive input and feedback from national and international experts. These standards should be based on international experience, but should also be suitable to Vietnam’s context.
The one-day roundtable attracted nearly 70 national and international participants who discussed the development of training program standards. Roundtable discussions covered a series of issues, including cooperation between Australia and Vietnam on higher education policy, and between Australian universities and Vietnamese quality assessment agencies on quality assurance issues, best practice sharing in university governance and quality assurance, and capacity building of lecturers and managers to promote ongoing dialogue between Vietnamese and Australian universities.
Prof. Peter Coaldrake and Dr. Karen Treloar from Australia’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) offered Australian perspectives on university quality assurance at the roundtable. They also shared their experiences in the classification of higher education institutions and its importance in the development of a highly functioning higher education system.
Mr. Michael Sadlon – Aus4Skills Program Director- speaking to roundtable participants through an on-line platform
The outcomes of the roundtable discussions will serve as an important ground for competent authorities to classify higher education institutions – the next step in implementing the Vietnam Qualifications Framework – based on which specific training programs will be developed by individual universities
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Aus4Skills is a cooperation program between Australia and Vietnam (2016-2020), with the aim to improve the quality of human resources, especially of managers and female officers. The program has supported tAus4Skills provides technical support to Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training for the implementation of the VQF, including the development of a schema on the classification of higher education institutions, and technical assistance in the implementation of the program framework.
By setting quality standards for three key disciplines following the schema on the classification of higher education institutions, the VQF is very important to quality assurance of higher education in Vietnam. It serves as a basis for the development of training program standards to meet the demands of employers who are engaged in the education system at all levels.
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Source: Education and Times
