“Higher education cannot operate outside the mechanisms of the market, and healthy competition is the core.”
This is one of the perspectives of Mr. Tran Duc Canh, former member of the Northeast Massachusetts Intercollegiate Council (USA), as he discusses the ranking and classification of universities in Vietnam today.
Ranking is Necessary
Interviewer: In your opinion, is it necessary for Vietnam to have university rankings and tiers at this time?
Mr. Tran Duc Canh: Evaluating and ranking higher education institutions fairly and objectively is always necessary. Universities also need to know where they stand in terms of training quality. Society, including future students and their families, needs useful information to choose the right schools and fields of study.
Not just in education, hospitals, hotels, etc., are always evaluated and ranked globally, attracting the attention of officials and the public. However, not all ranking purposes worldwide are fair and comprehensive, and many published rankings go beyond their goal of providing educational information to society.
Mr. Tran Duc Canh
If the goal of the ranking is to serve the above two purposes, then the criteria for surveys and research need to be set, and the evaluation method must be based on typical data collected such as assessments from university presidents/deans, student/alumni feedback on their schools, and feedback from organizations/companies employing graduates.
Data collected could include entry standards of the school, teaching resources (qualifications and achievements of faculty, and training facilities), tuition fees and the ability to provide financial aid to students, support for students, helping them develop life skills, the living environment for students (food, accommodation, social activities, sports, and surrounding communities), and outcomes such as employability, salary, career advancement, and academic and job achievements…
The weight (%) of each criterion needs to be analyzed very carefully before compiling the evaluation and ranking. This is an almost endless debate among researchers and university ranking bodies. Therefore, university rankings published worldwide are only relatively accurate at best.
What consequences might university tiering lead to, and does it truly encourage schools to compete and improve quality?
Mr. Tran Duc Canh: In my opinion, it is very difficult to fully and reliably evaluate and rank the system of universities and colleges during this initial phase. However, I still believe this is something worth doing. If a complete ranking cannot be achieved at this time, at least a “very relative” evaluation should be available.
It is important that schools see the rankings as fair and unbiased. The admission rate at top schools could be 1/10 while lower-ranked schools might have a 10/10 rate, and that is normal. Some schools, if they want to survive, must improve the quality of their training and address weaknesses; otherwise, they will be eliminated.
Sir, if we have standards for evaluating, ranking, or tiering universities, could any conflicts arise?
Mr. Tran Duc Canh: The biggest conflict in the evaluation and ranking will be the comparison of the current public university system with the young and largely “undernourished” private university system. The student ratio at private/public schools is struggling to surpass 15% of the total student population, let alone the target of 40% by 2020. The concern that private schools could be crushed in the rankings right from the “first round” is valid. However, comparisons must include all, comparing like with like, and also comparing different types of private schools with each other.
The hope is that the goal of the comparison and ranking is not to suppress… but for the strong to thrive, the weak to improve, especially with the private school system needing a support mechanism to develop sustainably. The target of 40% private school students may not be achieved by 2020, but at least by 2030, if we want higher education to develop in a balanced and sustainable way.
Higher education cannot operate outside the mechanisms of the market, and healthy competition is the core. However, there must be a clear distinction between the market mechanism and the commercialization of education. If the market mechanism is properly leveraged, universities will undoubtedly create conditions to improve training quality and reputation to attract students as customers.
Do Not “Tier,” Only “Classify Schools”
Do you think it is reasonable for our higher education to have only two categories, elite and applied, which are simple and easy to recognize?
Mr. Tran Duc Canh: When comparing, it should be apples to apples, not apples to oranges. Instead of using the term “tiering,” we should “classify schools” at the college and university level, which is more accurate. With the current number of colleges and universities, at least three different types of schools should be classified: large schools (offering education from bachelor’s to doctoral levels), medium-level schools (offering education from bachelor’s to master’s and a few doctoral programs), and colleges.
Ranking from 1 to 20…100 for each type of school is more reasonable than tiering. In the long run, it is very difficult to clearly distinguish between elite or applied schools, as the training programs of schools will continuously change, update, and develop, and that is a good thing. It is not necessary to tier every 10 years as per the draft proposal.
At the same time, other equally important classifications should be applied, such as: Public and private universities, universities in each region (South, North, Central), and fields of study of different types of schools. This way, society will have more detailed and comprehensive information for students to easily choose their schools.
In my opinion, the evaluation should be more flexible, but it must have enough ranking criteria to meet society’s information needs about the school system, rather than being too rigid and administrative.
For the context of Vietnamese education, how should the ranking be conducted, in your opinion?
Mr. Tran Duc Canh: If the draft is just a report from the Ministry of Education & Training every two years, focusing on the basics and measuring basic indicators, then there is nothing to discuss. But to truly evaluate university quality and rank them, the proposed criteria still lack a lot, and even then, it is debatable whether the proposed criteria are suitable for each type of school.
To have an evaluation and ranking of schools, the research criteria and evaluation methods I mentioned above are very important. Everyone knows that soft criteria have a great impact on education quality, but they are not given much attention in the draft.
Which educational bodies are capable of handling university rankings, in your opinion?
Mr. Tran Duc Canh: I do not think that evaluating and ranking colleges and universities is a task that one or two groups or organizations should undertake, but it should involve the participation of many research groups, centers, universities, and individuals. The research can be presented in forums and conferences, and should reach a necessary level of reliability before being published to society. These are studies I find very interesting both academically and in application, and they are very necessary for society. Society currently lacks much information about schools to guide students in choosing the right school and field of study. This is a very attractive topic for future research students.
The budget for this research comes from various sources. Some research is official and used for government reporting, while others are more consultative, guiding, and forecasting. In the long run, society will be the most important arbiter in evaluating and ranking universities.
Do you think the aim of this draft ranking and tiering is to align our higher education with global standards?
Mr. Tran Duc Canh: At present, the draft university ranking and the goal of aligning our education system with global standards are two different things. However, to be compared and ranked by the world in the future, we first need to compare ourselves to ourselves and position ourselves against the outside world.
If our goal is to get one or two universities into the top 100 in Asia and the top 300 globally in the next 20 years, then some proposed criteria to achieve this could include entry standards, student-to-teacher ratio, PhD-qualified faculty, scientific research published in world journals, the number of international students/faculty, the number of faculty who have won prestigious awards like Fields, Nobel, etc., and building educational and research facilities that meet international standards… If we prepare well, it is entirely possible for one or two universities to make it into these two groups in the next 20 years.
So what does it take to become a good university?
Mr. Tran Duc Canh:To become a good university, the elements of teaching, developing critical thinking, creativity, humanity, and the living and learning environment at the undergraduate level are the foundations of a good university. These elements are rarely mentioned in some international ranking reports, which is a mistake.
Aligning our higher education with global standards is the fundamental goal of training a workforce to develop the country. First, we must examine the educational philosophy we aim to achieve, restructure the outdated higher education management model, and remove unreasonable regulations that hinder the operation of the education system. Next, we must reassess the training, selection, and use of human resources at all levels in the education sector in line with integration-oriented development, while investing in appropriate hard infrastructure, to aim for global education integration in the coming decades.
Thank you, sir.
Source: http://vietbao.vn/Giao-duc/Xep-hang-dai-hoc-khong-nen-la-cong-cu-de-de-bep-nhau/410711778/202/
