Large schools but limited number of vice principals

At a recent workshop on modernizing and improving Vietnam's higher education , Associate Professor Dr. Do Phu Tran Tinh, Director of the Institute for Policy Development - Ho Chi Minh City National University, said that the mechanism of decentralization and delegation of authority in organizational structure and personnel apparatus at self-financed public service units in the education sector still has many shortcomings.

According to Mr. Tinh, although the Party's policies and laws all affirm that university autonomy is a legal right, coupled with accountability, in reality, units are still bound by many general regulations, causing difficulties in organizing and performing tasks in many areas.

For example, according to regulations, a university, regardless of its training scale of 40,000 or 4,000 students, can only have a maximum of 3 vice-principals; and can only establish departments and offices when there are at least 2 work areas and a minimum of 7 employees.

Associate Professor Do Phu Tran Tinh,
Associate Professor, Dr. Do Phu Tran Tinh, Director of the Institute for Policy Development - Ho Chi Minh City National University. Photo: Ho Chi Minh City National University

Meanwhile, member universities of Ho Chi Minh City National University have large training scales and need more vice rectors to take on and share the workload, contributing to improving administrative and operational efficiency, but are limited by this regulation.

Mr. Tinh proposed piloting an autonomous mechanism at a number of key universities in regulating organizational structure and personnel, allowing these schools to decide on the number of vice rectors and the structure of departments and offices according to their scale, operational characteristics and practical needs.

During the pilot phase, schools can flexibly establish specialized departments with appropriate number of staff, and at the same time establish a mechanism to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of operations and resource use, to ensure transparency and accountability.

The pilot results will be summarized and lessons learned, serving as a basis for building a comprehensive autonomous university governance mechanism, suitable to the scale, functions and development strategy of each school.

Let universities decide on their doctoral training programs

Mr. Tinh said that according to Article 24 of the Draft Law on Higher Education, the Minister of Education and Training has the right to approve programs for teacher training, health and law fields; as well as doctoral training programs. This regulation demonstrates the important management role of state agencies in specialized and high-level fields.

However, reality shows that many large universities have autonomously organized and implemented training programs at both undergraduate and graduate levels with clear effectiveness, ensuring quality, meeting practical needs and international integration.

Typically, doctoral training programs at Hanoi National University and Ho Chi Minh City National University have been effectively implemented, attracting a large number of graduate students, conducting many major research topics and having many publications in prestigious domestic and foreign journals.

In addition, the regulation requiring at least one of the two supervisors of a doctoral student to work at the training institution leads to a situation where even if they are leading professors or internationally prestigious scientists , they cannot provide independent supervision if they do not work at the training institution.

Mr. Tinh proposed to consider delegating or authorizing key universities to approve and implement training programs for specific majors and doctoral programs. This mechanism will help reduce the pressure on the Ministry of Education and Training in approving programs for all these institutions (currently there are about 103 teacher training institutions, 70 health training institutions, 67 law training institutions); shorten the implementation time, promote the role and mission of key universities with sufficient human resources, resources and appraisal capacity.

At the same time, it is necessary to add a special mechanism to allow foreign experts with international academic prestige to independently guide doctoral students, without having to go through a co-mentoring mechanism.

This mechanism can be flexibly designed in the direction of: Allowing training institutions to sign specialized guidance contracts with international scientists for each specific topic or stage; Regulating minimum standards on the number of international publications of the supervisor; Giving autonomy to training institutions in assessing capacity, controlling guidance quality and ensuring output standards of graduate students.

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/bat-cap-khi-dai-hoc-40-000-hay-4-000-sinh-vien-cung-chi-co-3-pho-hieu-truong-2456105.html