Resolution No. 14/2005/NQ-CP on fundamentally and comprehensively renewing higher education in Vietnam for the period 2006-2020

 RESOLUTION

On Comprehensive and Fundamental Renewal of Higher Education in Vietnam for the Period 2006-2020

 

After twenty years of renewal and five years of implementing the "Higher Education Development Strategy 2006-2010", higher education in our country has significantly developed in scale, diversified in types and forms of training, initially adjusted the structure of the system, improved curricula and training processes, and mobilized many social resources.

The quality of higher education in some fields, areas, and higher education institutions has shown positive changes, gradually meeting the requirements of economic and social development. The cadre with university and postgraduate qualifications, the vast majority of whom were trained at domestic educational institutions, have made significant contributions to the national renewal and construction efforts.

However, the achievements of higher education mentioned above are not yet solid, systematic, and fundamental, failing to meet the demands of industrialization and modernization, the learning needs of the people, and the requirements of international integration in the new period. Weaknesses and inadequacies in management mechanisms, structural systems, occupational structures, networks of higher education institutions, training processes, teaching methods, faculty and educational administration staff, efficiency in resource utilization, and negative phenomena in examinations, degree issuance, and other educational activities need to be promptly addressed.

To quickly meet the requirements of the country in the new period, higher education in Vietnam must undergo a strong, fundamental, and comprehensive renewal. At the Government session in July 2005, the Government decided on the Project for Renewing Higher Education in Vietnam with the following contents:

1. GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Closely linking the renewal of higher education with the strategy for economic and social development, reinforcing national defense and security, the high-level human resource needs of the country, and the trends in science and technology.

Modernizing the higher education system based on inheriting the achievements of education and training in the country, promoting national identity, absorbing the best from humanity, and rapidly approaching advanced trends in higher education worldwide.

The renewal of higher education must ensure practicality, effectiveness, and synchronization; selecting breakthrough points, priority areas, and key institutions to concentrate resources for clear progress. Expanding scale must go hand in hand with improving quality; ensuring social equity must be combined with guaranteeing training effectiveness; reform must be carried out from objectives, processes, content to teaching and learning methods, evaluation methods; interconnecting among disciplines, forms, and levels of training; closely integrating and creating momentum for further reform in general education and vocational education.

Based on renewing thinking and management mechanisms in higher education, reasonably and effectively combining the clear definition of state management functions and responsibilities with ensuring autonomy rights, enhancing social responsibility, and transparency of higher education institutions. Promoting the initiative and proactivity of higher education institutions in the renewal process, with the core being the faculty and administrative staff, and the active participation of the whole society.

The renewal of higher education is a nationwide endeavor under the leadership of the Party and the management of the State. The State will strengthen investment in higher education while promoting socialization, creating favorable conditions through policies for organizations, individuals, and the whole society to participate in developing higher education.

2. Objectives.

Determining the Administrative Reform Index to monitor and evaluate in a substantive, objective, and fair manner the annual implementation results of administrative reform of ministries, agencies equivalent to ministries (referred to as ministries), and people's committees of provinces and central-supervised cities (referred to as provinces) during the implementation of the Comprehensive Program on Administrative Reform of State Agencies for the 2011-2020 period.

Fundamentally and comprehensively renewing higher education to achieve significant qualitative, effective, and quantitative changes, meeting the requirements of industrialization and modernization, international economic integration, and the learning needs of the people. By 2020, Vietnamese higher education should reach advanced levels in the region and approach advanced levels globally; possess high competitiveness and adaptability to the socialist-oriented market economy mechanism.

b) Specific Objectives:

- Completing the network of higher education institutions nationwide, with functional differentiation in training tasks, ensuring reasonable structures in terms of qualification levels, occupational fields, regional distribution, consistent with the policy of socializing education and overall planning for economic and social development at both national and local levels.

- Developing higher education programs oriented towards research and vocational application. Ensuring connectivity between programs within the entire system. Establishing and perfecting measures to ensure quality and the education accreditation system. Building several world-class universities.

- Expanding the scale of training, achieving a ratio of 200 students per 10,000 population by 2010 and 450 students per 10,000 population by 2020, with approximately 70-80% of the total number of students enrolled in vocational application programs at non-state higher education institutions accounting for about 40% of the total student population.

- Building a sufficient faculty and educational administration staff in higher education, with moral integrity and professional conscience, high professional qualifications, and advanced teaching and management styles; ensuring a student-to-faculty ratio in the higher education system not exceeding 20. By 2010, at least 40% of faculty members should have master's degrees and 25% should have doctoral degrees; by 2020, at least 60% of faculty members should have master's degrees and 35% should have doctoral degrees.

- Significantly increasing the scale and effectiveness of scientific and technological activities in higher education institutions. Major universities must become strong national centers for scientific research; income from scientific and technological activities, production, and services should account for at least 15% of the total income of higher education institutions by 2010 and 25% by 2020.

- Perfecting policies for developing higher education to ensure the autonomy rights and social responsibility of higher education institutions, state management, and societal oversight and evaluation of higher education.

3. Tasks and Solutions for Renewal

a) Reforming the training structure and perfecting the network of higher education institutions:

- Review and appraise the current higher education institution network; innovate planning work to develop the network, ensuring the implementation of higher education development goals.

- Prioritize expanding the scale of vocational-oriented programs; apply flexible training processes, interconnecting traditional models with multi-stage models to increase learning opportunities and stratify human resource levels.

- Effectively implement the mechanism transformation of public higher education institutions according to Resolution No. 05/2005/NQ-CP dated April 18, 2005 of the Government on accelerating socialization of educational, health, cultural, and sports activities; convert semi-public higher education institutions and some public higher education institutions into private ones; perfect the community college model and establish regulations for transferring training between colleges and universities, consolidate open universities to expand the scale of these two types of institutions. Encourage establishing higher education institutions within corporations and large enterprises. Study organizational models and have specific plans to merge higher education institutions with research facilities to closely link training with scientific research and production.

- Focus investment, mobilize experts both domestically and internationally, and have appropriate mechanisms to build world-class universities.

b) Innovate training content, methods, and procedures:

- Reorganize the curriculum framework; ensure the connectivity among different levels of education; properly address the relationship between the volume of general education knowledge and professional education study time, enhancing the effectiveness of each course. Innovate training content, closely linking with practical scientific research, technological development, and occupational requirements in society, serving economic and social development needs of each sector, approaching advanced global standards. Develop research potential, vocational skills, community activity capabilities, and entrepreneurial abilities of students.

- Implement training method innovation based on three criteria: equipping learning methods, promoting student initiative; using information technology and communication in teaching and learning activities. Exploit open educational resources and online internet resources. Select and utilize advanced programs and textbooks from various countries.

- Establish and implement a transition plan to a credit-based training system, creating favorable conditions for students to accumulate knowledge, change majors, interconnect, and transfer to subsequent levels of education both domestically and internationally.

- Innovate the mechanism for allocating admission quotas towards quality assurance requirements, human resource utilization needs, public learning demands, and increasing autonomy of higher education institutions.

- Improve admissions through modern educational measurement technology application. Expand recruitment sources, create additional learning opportunities for disadvantaged groups, ensuring social equity in admissions.

- Rectify training organization work, innovate training content and methods to improve master's and doctoral training quality.

c) Innovate planning, training, upgrading, and utilizing faculty and management staff.

- Build and implement planning for the faculty and management staff of higher education institutions, ensuring sufficient quantity, improving quality, meeting the requirements of higher education reform.

- Vigorously innovate the content, programs, and methods of training and upgrading faculty and management staff of higher education institutions. Emphasize improving the professional expertise and pedagogical skills of faculty, strategic vision, creative capacity, and professionalism of leadership and management personnel.

- Innovate recruitment methods towards objectivity, fairness, and competition factors. Perfect and implement long-term contract mechanisms; ensure equality between permanent and contractual faculty, between public and non-public higher education institution faculty.

- Develop and promulgate new policies for faculty including faculty standards, labor norms, working conditions, scientific and technological tasks, long-term leave systems for academic exchange, and objective evaluation mechanisms for work results. Issue policies and systems for concurrent teaching positions.

- Innovate the appointment and removal process for professor and associate professor titles towards delegating higher education institutions to implement based on common standards and conditions set by the State. Periodically evaluate to reappoint or remove professor and associate professor titles. Reform administrative procedures for recognizing lecturers and principal lecturers.

d) Innovate the organization and implementation of scientific and technological activities:

- The State invests in upgrading and building new strong research centers in higher education institutions, initially focusing on key universities. Encourage establishing research centers and science and technology enterprises within higher education institutions. Encourage scientific and technological organizations and enterprises to invest in developing research centers within higher education institutions.

- Strengthen educational scientific research. Enforce intellectual property laws.

- Specifically define the research tasks of faculty, linking graduate student training with the implementation of scientific and technological research projects. Have suitable policies to encourage graduate students and postgraduate learners to actively participate in scientific research.

- Allocate at least 1% of the annual state budget for higher education institutions to carry out scientific and technological tasks stipulated in the Law on Science and Technology.

đ) Innovate resource mobilization and financial mechanisms:

- The State will strengthen investment in infrastructure for higher education; focus on building shared facilities such as: national data centers, electronic library systems, key laboratories, dormitories, and cultural, physical education and sports facilities. Localities will adjust planning and allocate land to build modern higher education institutions meeting regional and international standards.

- The State will implement preferential policies, support, and encourage domestic and foreign investors to invest in the field of higher education; ensure ownership rights under the law and material and spiritual benefits for investors.

- Higher education institutions will proactively diversify revenue sources from training contracts, research and development, technology transfer, service activities, production, and business operations.

- Rebuild tuition fee, scholarship, and student loan policies based on establishing principles for sharing higher education costs between the State, students, and the community. The State will provide full or partial tuition assistance for policy beneficiaries, the poor, and directly to students.

- Reform financial policies to enhance the efficiency of budgetary investments and exploit other investment sources for higher education. Study the application of budget allocation processes based on societal evaluations of higher education institutions. Regularly organize economic effectiveness assessments of higher education.

- Implement accounting for income and expenditure for public higher education institutions, creating conditions for these institutions to have high autonomy in income and expenditure according to the principle of covering all reasonable expenses with revenues, accumulating necessary funds for developing material facilities for training and research. Supplement and complete financial regulations for non-public higher education institutions.

e) Reform management mechanisms

- Transition public higher education institutions to operate under an autonomous mechanism with full legal personality, having the right to make decisions and be responsible for training, research, organization, personnel, and finance.

- Abolish the ministry management mechanism, establish a state ownership representation mechanism for public higher education institutions. Ensure the role of community oversight; promote the role of mass organizations, especially professional associations, in monitoring higher education quality.

- Centralized state management focuses on developing and directing implementation strategies for development; directing the deployment of quality assurance and accreditation systems for higher education; perfecting the legal environment; strengthening inspection and audit work; macro-regulating the structure and scale of higher education to meet national human resource needs at different periods.

- Develop the Higher Education Law.

g) Regarding international integration:

- Develop an international integration strategy, enhancing cooperation capabilities and competitiveness of Vietnam's higher education in implementing international agreements and commitments.

- Implement teaching and learning in foreign languages, initially in English; improve the quality of training and research programs attracting foreigners; selectively adopt advanced training programs from around the world; reach agreements on equivalence of diplomas and training programs with higher education institutions worldwide; encourage high-quality joint training programs, exchange of lecturers and experts with foreign countries; encourage Vietnamese lecturers abroad to participate in teaching in Vietnam; increase the number of foreign exchange students in Vietnam. Encourage local study abroad; establish appropriate advisory and management mechanisms to help Vietnamese students choose fields of study, select schools, and achieve high-quality and effective learning outcomes.

- Create mechanisms and favorable conditions for reputable global investors and higher education institutions to open international higher education institutions in Vietnam or collaborate with Vietnamese higher education institutions.

4. Implementation Organization

a) Establish a Steering Committee for Higher Education Reform headed by a Deputy Prime Minister to direct higher education reform.

b) Develop detailed projects to implement the reform targets, tasks, and solutions for higher education.

c) Funding for higher education reform will be allocated from the State budget.

d) Responsibilities of state management agencies:

- Organize the implementation of detailed higher education reform projects.

- The Ministry of Education and Training will lead and coordinate with relevant ministries and provincial people's committees to develop specific plans and timelines according to each stage of the five-year socio-economic development plan to implement detailed higher education reform projects; guide, inspect, supervise, compile reports on higher education reform, and regularly report to the Prime Minister. Conduct mid-term reviews of higher education reform at the beginning of 2010, 2015, and final reviews at the beginning of 2020. Initiate drafting the Higher Education Law to submit to the National Assembly's first session of the XIIth term.

- The Ministry of Planning and Investment will lead and coordinate with the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education and Training, and the Ministry of Science and Technology to develop mechanisms for mobilizing domestic and foreign investment resources to implement higher education reform; present to the National Assembly annual budget allocations for higher education institutions to carry out scientific and technological tasks as stipulated by the Law on Science and Technology.

- The Ministry of Finance will lead and coordinate with the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Ministry of Education and Training, and relevant ministries and agencies to perfect financial policies for higher education and financial autonomy mechanisms for higher education institutions.

- The Ministry of Home Affairs will lead and coordinate with the Ministry of Education and Training, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and relevant ministries and agencies to develop autonomous mechanisms for public higher education institutions, policies for university lecturers; propose specific organizational models for merging higher education institutions with research facilities.

- The Ministry of Science and Technology shall take the lead, in coordination with the Ministry of Education and Training and other ministries, sectors, and localities, to develop policies and mechanisms to leverage the potential of high-level scientific and technological staff at higher education institutions.

- Ministers, heads of ministerial-level agencies, heads of government-affiliated agencies, Chairpersons of provincial People's Committees under the central city administrations are responsible for coordinating with relevant ministries and sectors to implement this Resolution./.