Keep or drop regional university?

(Dan Tri) - In Vietnam, multidisciplinary regional universities were established in the early 90s based on the guiding viewpoint of Resolution 4 of the 7th Central Committee (1993) on building key higher education institutions.

Over 30 years of construction and development, all three regional universities have made steady progress and important contributions to the socio -economic development of the country in general and each economic region in particular.

However, to be fair, our regional universities so far have not been as “strong” as expected.

According to the popular concept, "regional university" is a higher education institution established only in a number of specific territories, usually in economically and socially underdeveloped areas, to prioritize training human resources to directly meet the development requirements of the region, helping that region quickly catch up with other regions of the country.

For a long time, the Party and the State have advocated the establishment of many regional higher education institutions like this. For example, in the Northern mountainous region, there are Agricultural University 3, Viet Bac Pedagogical University, Thai Nguyen University of Industry, and Viet Bac Medical University.

Students of Thai Nguyen University (Photo: TNU).

In the Northwest mountainous region, there is the Northwest Pedagogical College. In the Central Highlands region, there is the Tay Nguyen University. In the Mekong Delta region, there is Can Tho University…

Thus, the concept of “regional schools” is not too strange to Vietnam. What is new in the 3 regional universities as well as the 2 national universities established 30 years ago, since the country entered the renovation period, is that they all have a multidisciplinary structure, a type of university education structure that is very popular in the world.

This type of structure is completely different from the single-field structure (following the old Soviet model) of regional schools that existed in Vietnam before.

International experience shows that multidisciplinary universities have advantages that other types of schools cannot have. Typically, the organizational structure is compact, the budget is invested centrally, students are free to choose to study subjects or interdisciplinary programs in different schools within a university, students study with the best lecturers in all subjects, and interdisciplinary programs can be easily opened...

In order for regional universities to have a multi-disciplinary structure, in 1994, the Government chose the solution of merging single-disciplinary regional universities and rearranging them into multi-disciplinary regional universities with the requirement that multi-disciplinary regional universities must be organized as a unified entity, especially in the field of training, with a 3-level administrative system: university, college and department.

However, the reality has not been as the original goal. Up to now, regional universities as well as national universities still only exist in the form of a "specialized university association" with a two-tier university structure.

Because member schools still operate almost independently and do not coordinate with each other, first of all in terms of training, regional universities do not have the combined strength that society and learners expect.

However, regional universities exist for the mission of this model as mentioned above. For example, if there were no Thai Nguyen University, how could the member schools have a Learning Resource Center with a total investment of more than 7.25 million USD sponsored by AP through the East Meets West Organization for use?

In the book Festschrift - Proceedings of Humboldt University 200 years , Dr. Vu Quang Viet compared American and Vietnamese universities as follows: "Vietnamese universities today are still organized as oases, oases in organization and oases in geography (in the sense that the humanities school is in one place, the law school is in another place, the natural sciences school, such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology... is in another place).

When Vietnamese universities were reorganized into national or regional universities, the reorganization was only in name, with a higher management level above.

College programs are not integrated, students at one school cannot take credits at another, and the different locations also make it difficult to take credits.

The organizational silo also does not allow teachers to combine, exchange and research together. This silo organization continues because the philosophy of “exploiting the combined strength” is not reflected in the curriculum of each school.

For example, if the school of economics withdraws from the national/regional university and becomes an independent school, then learning mathematics, for example, if still taught by economics teachers, will obviously be learned from someone who only knows a little about mathematics.

On the contrary, wanting to teach environmental economics without knowing anything about chemistry or agriculture, forestry or without having the opportunity to interact with people in these fields is no different than simply aiming to create “blind” people…

To thoroughly resolve the current problems of regional universities, competent authorities need to soon issue a new Decree for national and regional universities, which clearly states the mission of each type of university, and stipulates that these universities must change their structure in the direction of transforming from a model of a union of specialized universities to a model of a truly multidisciplinary university.

This model has a reasonable division of labor and decentralization between the university and its member schools, ensuring the promotion of the initiative and strengths of each school, along with the overall strength of the entire university.

Besides, because regional universities are only established in economically and socially underdeveloped areas, they must be given priority for state budget investment, limiting the application of Decree 60 on financial autonomy for this type of university.

The development strategy of regional universities must be closely linked to the socio-economic development strategy of the region. Regional universities and regions develop together. Only when the region reaches the general development level of the whole country, the State should raise the issue of changing the mission of regional universities.

At the same time, regional universities must be completely autonomous in all three aspects: academics, organization - personnel and finance.

Finally, to avoid confusion, the education sector should use the term “university” instead of the current term “college”.

Author: Dr. Le Viet Khuyen, Vice President of the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges, Former Deputy Director of the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education and Training.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/giao-duc/giu-hay-bo-dai-hoc-vung-20251120114948675.htm