Vu Van Hoa, Deputy Rector of Hanoi University of Business andTechnology, explains a set of recently proposed criteria for rankinguniversities to Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper.

*What is yourcomment on the Ministry of Education and Training's proposed criteriafor the ranking and stratification of Vietnamese universities?

Thisis the first draft of the criteria from some experts in the ministryand is not yet the final document. In my opinion, stratification of ouruniversities is necessary. But the quality of the first draft is notgood enough. It is not objective, and the criteria must bescientifically based. We should not just impose a subjective idea that auniversity's ranking is first or second class.

*So in your opinion, what should we do to make the assessment more objective?

Atpresent, universities in Vietnam are springing up like mushrooms afterthe rain. That's why the stratification criteria must be discussed muchfurther. At present, some universities are listed in the first or secondgroup. I myself don't know on what criteria the ranking was based.

Manypeople also say that the quality of public universities is better thanthose of private ones. I think that to prove this, the first thing weshould do is to evaluate the scientific capability of lecturers and thecurricula at a particular university, as well as its role in thedevelopment of the homeland. It is almost impossible to compare auniversity of economics with a university of technology.

Thesecond thing we should do is to evaluate the infrastructure andtechnology available in each university. This is an important factor inranking universities.

The third thing is to look at auniversity's development scope in recent years to see whether graduatesare accepted by society. I know one university that could not finish anyproject. In short, it is very important to introduce a set of criteriaaccepted by society, not by people sitting in an air-conditioned room.Of course, the criteria must be confirmed by rectors of differentuniversities.

*Some people say that the assessment criteria are too subjective. What's your position on this?

Inmy opinion, before we develop criteria to evaluate something, we shouldlook at what's been done in other countries and learn from theirexperiences. It doesn't mean that we have to follow the educationalsystems of Great Britain, the United States or France.

I think,we can learn something from some Asian countries such as the Republic ofKorea or Thailand. At present, the labour productivity of one Singaporeworker is almost equal to that of 15 Vietnamese. And the productivityof one Thai worker is equal to that of five Vietnamese.

We shouldlook at the educational system in other countries, particularly theirtertiary education, and see what criteria they use to stratify and rankuniversities.-VNA