To avoid confusing 'university' with 'university'

Independent university, member university in university, university affiliated school... are the terms that have long been misunderstood by students, parents and society and they do not know why it is so "confused". Should we change to another term and unify the whole system?

Dr. Ho Quoc Tuan, working at the University of Bristol (UK), said that to avoid misunderstandings, according to foreign names, member universities of universities in Vietnam should only be called "schools", for example, the School of Economics and Law of Ho Chi Minh City National University, the School of Social Sciences and Humanities of Hanoi National University... This name will be similar to universities that were converted from universities after the 2018 Law on University Education took effect, such as Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics, Duy Tan University, and National Economics University.

The way of calling university (including many member and affiliated universities) and university is confusing and misleading.

PHOTO: DAO NGOC THACH

However, Professor Luong Van Hy (University of Toronto, Canada) said that changing the name based on a high consensus is not a simple process because there are things that seem reasonable but are difficult to implement in the context of Vietnam's universities. "An example is that in the 1990s, the government outlined a roadmap to bring most of the specialized institutes in the Academy of Social Sciences and the Academy of Science and Technology to the two National Universities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, but in the end it was not possible. If we now propose to change the name of a member university of a national university or a regional university to "school", it is unlikely that there will be high consensus among these units," Mr. Hy commented.

According to Professor Hy, this is a specific and somewhat complicated issue in Vietnam that makes it difficult for the international community to understand. "The issue can be resolved more reasonably, but it cannot be resolved reasonably at present. It is like the issue of naming universities or colleges. It is a very long story," he assessed.

Professor Hy also said that some universities in Vietnam have expanded their training to fields quite far from their traditional fields when they find it easier to recruit students in new fields and thus increase the school's revenue. "To do so in the current mechanism, the solution is to become a university with many member schools but expand in terms of training breadth. Another solution is that the university promotes its specialized fields, and is willing to combine with other universities to form a university, like in France when they established Université Paris Sciences et Lettres and from there increased its position and reputation quite quickly in the world. That is a much more important issue than the issue of university names and universities," Professor Hy stated his opinion.

The leader of a university also agreed that the model of national university and regional university with the current name of university in Vietnam has historical factors, so when changing the name, this factor must be taken into account. Accordingly, it is not simple for a university with a long-standing scale and reputation, such as the University of Science and Technology, to remove the word "University" and only have the word "University of Science and Technology".

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/de-tranh-nham-dai-hoc-voi-truong-dai-hoc-185241208214726474.htm