30 YEARS - A JOURNEY OF LIGHTING UP TALENTS, CULTIVING TALENTS

The National University model is also an autonomous university. At that time, the country had just entered the period of renovation. The concepts of university autonomy and international standards were not yet popular in Vietnam's higher education. However, with a long-term vision, the Party and the State recognized the limitations of the existing specialized universities, which were built to serve the centrally planned economy, to establish VNU with the aim of becoming the leading university in Vietnam, integrating with the modern higher education of the world.
30 years have passed since then.
Since its establishment, VNU has developed remarkably and achieved many great achievements, always affirming itself as the leading university in Vietnam.
In 2012, the National Universities were included for the first time in the Law on Higher Education. On that basis, it created more favorable conditions for the development of the two National Universities.

When it was first established, VNU only had 3 member universities: Hanoi National University, Hanoi National University of Education and Hanoi University of Foreign Languages. Up to now, VNU has basically completed its multidisciplinary and multi-field structure with 9 member universities, 5 research institutes, 2 affiliated schools and 2 affiliated faculties. The universities include: University of Natural Sciences, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Technology, University of Foreign Languages, University of Economics, University of Education, Vietnam-Japan University, University of Medicine and Pharmacy and University of Law (newly upgraded from Faculty of Law to University of Law in 2022). Research institutes include: Institute of Information Technology, Institute of Vietnamese Studies and Development Science, Institute of Natural Resources and Environment, Tran Nhan Tong Institute, Institute of Education Quality Assurance. Affiliated schools include the International School, School of Management and Business (HSB); Training faculties affiliated to VNU include: Faculty of Interdisciplinary and most recently, Faculty of International Francophone (IFI).
The training scale in the first years was only about 20,000 full-time students and 100 PhD students. After 30 years, the training scale of VNU has tripled, about 60,000 full-time students and the training scale of PhD students has reached 1,100.
From only having more than 50 training majors, up to now, VNU-Hanoi plans to enroll 141 university-level majors, including 6 new majors in 2023.
With the above multidisciplinary and multi-field structure, VNU has great strength to participate in solving key scientific and technological problems of the country in all fields, including difficult and important fields such as: Aerospace, Automation and Informatics, Artificial Intelligence, Construction - Transportation, Nanotechnology, Non-traditional Security,...

VNU is an educational institution that trains students from junior high school, high school to doctoral level. In addition to the specialized schools that have been established for a long time with a long history of achievements known nationwide such as: High School for the Gifted in Natural Sciences (under the University of Natural Sciences) and High School for the Gifted in Foreign Languages ​​(under the University of Foreign Languages), recently the High School for the Gifted in Social Sciences and Humanities (under the University of Social Sciences and Humanities), and the High School of Educational Sciences (under the University of Education) have been established. In particular, the High School for the Gifted in Natural Sciences has achieved many achievements in international and continental arenas, ranking first in international gold medals in Vietnam.
In addition to the standard training programs, VNU has developed special programs to train and foster talents. For the first time in Vietnam, in 1997, VNU built and implemented the project "Training talented science bachelors" and since 2001, the project "Training talented human resources". In addition to the tradition of training talents at the specialized high school level (with 2 specialized schools: University of Natural Sciences and University of Foreign Languages), VNU is the first university in Vietnam to formally implement the training and fostering of talents at the university level. The goal of the 2001 Project is to exploit the potential and strengths of VNU in terms of facilities and leading scientific staff to participate in training excellent scientists in core basic sciences, high-tech and key socio-economic fields, providing high-quality human resources to serve the cause of industrialization and modernization of the country, especially the team of lecturers of basic sciences at universities and colleges as well as talented researchers, managers, and technology transferors at research institutes, enterprises, agencies, and units nationwide, with the input of the talented bachelor of science system being students who have won international and national Olympic awards and have excellent university entrance exam scores.
In 2005, VNU conducted a review of the Project “Training Talented Human Resources”. With the successes and lessons learned after nearly 10 years of piloting, our Party and State highly appreciated the university talent training model of VNU, and at the same time directed relevant ministries and branches to research and develop policies to create favorable conditions for the development and expansion of the model of nurturing and training high-quality talents of VNU for the entire industry. Training talented science bachelors continues to be maintained by VNU to this day.
From 2006 onwards, in order to enhance integration with international standards, while the scale of training talented, high-quality bachelors is still small, the level of "internationalization" in terms of programs, training methods, and foreign languages ​​used is not high enough, VNU has begun to implement advanced training programs. Advanced training programs are undergraduate training programs, using the entire program and curriculum of a foreign university, taught entirely in English, approved and funded by the Ministry of Education and Training. The teaching staff is Vietnamese and some foreign lecturers. This program only undertakes the internationalization of a training program, not aiming to develop the entire industry, Faculty-level units to meet international standards.
Therefore, following the advanced program, in 2007, VNU began implementing international standard training programs, also known as the strategic mission program (initially called the 16-23 program, because it focused on selecting 16 undergraduate majors and 23 postgraduate majors to participate in the Project). The goal of this program is to build and develop the entire industry and major to meet international standards, from training programs to staff, facilities, learning materials, and human resources according to the evaluation and ranking criteria to create the premise and conditions for step-by-step development from departments, faculties to member universities that meet international standards and are invested in and approved according to each project for each industry/major. This is an important goal and strategy of VNU in the development process, aiming to selectively cultivate and gradually improve the quality of training, scientific research, knowledge transfer and competitiveness, and brand of VNU, contributing to fundamental innovation of Vietnamese higher education to approach international standards and quality.
The training programs of VNU according to the latest Regulations issued in 2022 are neatly summarized as follows: Talent training program, High-quality program (including advanced, international standard programs - training according to the content and programs of prestigious universities in the world) and standard programs.
In addition, VNU also has a mechanism for connecting and sharing permanent staff throughout the university. Therefore, the training programs are also very rich and diverse. In 1993, VNU only had a few dozen training programs, but now there are 141 undergraduate training programs, nearly 200 master's training programs and 180 doctoral training programs.
Faced with urgent requirements for improving the quality of training high-quality human resources. VNU has implemented the Project to innovate doctoral training at VNU and issued new regulations on admission and training for doctoral degrees (2017, 2022). These are strong breakthroughs in training activities. The new regulations require improving the output standards of expertise and foreign languages ​​of doctoral students. Currently, VNU is the only higher education institution in the country that requires doctoral students to have international publications. VNU's regulations also improve the standards on international publications and the quality of the team of lecturers guiding doctoral students as well as the team of lecturers participating in doctoral training and teaching; requiring the linkage of doctoral students' thesis writing activities with the activities of the department/laboratory; with participation in research topics; guidance on practice and internship; guidance on graduation theses and scientific seminars of specialized units; granting the highest autonomy and responsibility to the instructors and departments in the process of training PhD students. At the same time, the Regulation also exempts the closed review process for PhD students with excellent research achievements and many published articles in prestigious international ISI journals. With this Regulation, VNU conducts doctoral training with requirements on output standards, as well as following the process and standards of training organization and management like those of advanced universities in the world. VNU is truly a "main machine" - contributing significantly and effectively to the training of highly qualified lecturers for universities nationwide.

Not only pioneering in training and nurturing talents through special training programs as mentioned above, VNU is also a pioneer in the country in determining to develop according to the research-oriented university model, linking training with research, with the building and development of strong research groups.
With the philosophy of training through research to ensure quality and research to reach world-class, high-level training, in 2004, at the 10th meeting of the Science and Training Council of VNU, the basic criteria of a research university were identified, such as the quality of teaching and research staff; student/lecturer ratio; graduate/undergraduate training ratio; quantity, quality and citations of international publications; inventions, patents; science and technology awards, etc., and from there, orient the school's activities. Pioneering the expansion of training scale, towards increasing the graduate/undergraduate training ratio as well as investing in building research groups are two of the important solutions to implement this strategy.
VNU also pioneered in opening new majors, pilot majors/specializations that are not yet included in the State's training code list, such as information security, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, aerospace technology, non-traditional security, climate change, etc. Up to now, a number of VNU's pilot programs have been included in the State's training list, such as training programs in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Development Economics, Business Law (undergraduate level), Japanese Language (master's level), Measurement and Evaluation in Education (master's and doctoral levels), etc. Currently, VNU is training nearly 50 new pilot programs (from bachelor's, engineer's, to master's and doctoral levels). These are specialties in VNU's training.
With a long-term, comprehensive and comprehensive vision, in 1995, the leaders of VNU established the Center for Training Quality Assurance and Educational Development Research (the predecessor of the Institute for Education Quality Assurance, the Testing Center and the Center for Education Quality Assessment of VNU today). The contributions of this Center to the criteria for ensuring education quality, university rankings, and the necessary qualifications for university admission to develop standardized tests to assess capacity, as well as to open the first major and train the first master's and doctoral degrees in measurement and assessment in education in the country. The achievements over the past 30 years in the field of testing, accreditation and quality assurance of education by the Institute for Educational Quality Assurance and the Accreditation Center of VNU once again prove the correct decision of the leadership of VNU and affirm the position and pioneering role of VNU in measuring, assessing, ensuring quality and accreditation of education quality in Vietnam, gradually reaching out to the region and the world.
In 2012, the Training Department developed a Project to innovate admissions based on competency assessment and during the 3 years from 2012 to 2014, it was the unit directly implementing the development of exam questions as well as regulations, processes, and software for competency assessment, first applied to the TN and CLC systems and as a premise for the establishment of the Testing Center - a specialized unit in organizing competency assessment exams at VNU. In 2016, VNU took the lead in innovating university admissions based on competency assessment for all training programs; pioneered in developing standardized competency assessment tests and also pioneered the successful implementation of enrollment innovation based on the use of competency assessment tests at VNU. With a wide and deep range of knowledge, fast test results, objective and honest automatic scoring by machine, and the ability to organize for candidates to actively register for the test many times a year, it has been highly appreciated and supported by public opinion. Admissions based on the Competency Assessment of VNU are like a breath of fresh air that cools down the stress of university entrance exams in 3 general categories every year in the summer of June. Many other universities have trusted and used the results of the Competency Assessment Test of VNU for admissions.
VNU is also one of the pioneers in successfully implementing credit-based training in Vietnam. After several years of research and study on foreign credit-based training organization and management methods, since 2006, VNU has begun to apply the positive elements of the credit-based training method, namely: converting the program; developing course outlines; applying teaching-learning and assessment methods based on credits; and since 2010; to date, the credit-based training method has been fully and thoroughly applied. Training programs are designed according to output standards, with common knowledge blocks taught uniformly throughout VNU. This success has created conditions for promoting the strengths of inter-connection and linkage in VNU, the a+b model (such as the training model for bachelor of pedagogy, general practitioner, etc.), especially in building new interdisciplinary and inter-unit training programs; in the successful implementation of dual degree teaching. In addition, thanks to the accumulation of credits, students can proactively choose to accumulate courses according to their personal plans and time, so up to now, nearly 8,000 students have been awarded dual degrees (2nd regular degree during their study at VNU) and more than 500 students have graduated from university 1 to 2 semesters earlier than the regulations.
An innovative initiative and policy that cannot be ignored is: in order to select many excellent students to study in the university program, since 2014, VNU has pioneered in researching and promulgating specific regulations for specialized students in VNU (and in 2022, promulgating revised specific regulations applicable to students of specialized schools nationwide) - promulgating criteria and regulations for direct admission to member universities and affiliated faculties of VNU for excellent students. Also since 2022, the VNU-level Olympic exam has been organized to select excellent students - talents from high schools across the country. Therefore, it has attracted a source of excellent students to study basic sciences to continue the tradition and promote the strengths of VNU.
VNU is also a pioneer in educational institutions building a model for training talented, high-quality, international-standard talents; a pioneer in the country in reviewing and researching, building a master plan for training professions (2014, 2021) and stratifying training programs (2015). This is a guideline, a plan and an extremely important strategy to guide the training activities of VNU and its training units in each period.

VNU's training programs are built on the basis of referring to the training programs of advanced universities in the world. VNU implements the training philosophy through research, building strong research groups (NNC) to reach the pinnacle of knowledge; then from the pinnacle of research, promote high-level training and develop science and technology potential. Up to now, VNU has hundreds of large and small NNCs, of which about 30 NNCs have been recognized by the President of VNU as strong NNCs at VNU level. These NNCs have played an important role in training individualized talents, as well as in opening new training majors/majors, new departments/labs of VNU in recent years.
Thanks to training through research, students, graduate students, and PhD students are able to participate in activities in the environment of strong research institutions and thus their talents are illuminated. Up to now, many final year students and over 90% of PhD students in the field of Natural Sciences and Technology of VNU have published in international ISI journals. Many PhD students of VNU - trained domestically, but have research results, quantity and quality of international publications higher than PhD students trained entirely abroad.
Many students and PhD students entering VNU have received dedicated and enthusiastic guidance from professors, leading scientists, and dedicated teachers, and have had a good research and learning environment, and have been able to develop their abilities and shine, achieving excellent results in their studies and research. In 2022, VNU granted scholarships to outstanding PhD students up to 100 million/year and for the first time granted post-doc scholarships to outstanding young PhD students up to 120 million/year, and implemented a scholarship policy for excellent students majoring in basic sciences at the level of full tuition support, living expenses, and free accommodation in dormitories.
Many outstanding alumni of VNU have become famous leaders of agencies, businesses, scientists and managers. VNU has effectively contributed to the cause of training high-quality, highly qualified talents for the country.

The development of new interdisciplinary majors, spearheads of technical and technological fields where society has a high demand for human resources, as well as meeting the requirements of the 4.0 revolution, is being given special attention and has made breakthroughs by VNU, including new, pioneering training programs such as Computer Science; Mechatronics; Electronics - Information Technology; Energy Engineering, Environmental Engineering; Infrastructure Engineering, Nanotechnology, Construction - Traffic Engineering Technology; Aerospace Technology, Robotics; Information Security, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science; Automation and Information Technology; Management of financial institutions; Marine Economy; Climate Change, etc.
With over 500 training programs at undergraduate, master and doctoral levels, from the time of only basic science majors, after 30 years of construction and development, VNU has now achieved the following training structure: natural sciences, medicine and pharmacy 25%; social sciences and humanities, economics, foreign languages, law, education 40%; technology - engineering 20%; interdisciplinary and pilot 15%.
VNU has actively transformed the structure of its majors from basic science to engineering, technology and practice. Thanks to that, VNU’s majors have quickly integrated with the world, closely linked with industry and businesses, and the rate of graduates finding jobs is increasing.
In summary, training activities have made important and worthy contributions to the development and growth of VNU, actively and effectively contributing to the innovations of the higher education sector such as training talents with high quality; organizing and managing training according to credits; developing according to the model of multidisciplinary and multi-field research university, implementing training through research and focusing on building and developing research groups in universities; ensuring the quality of education; assessing, stratifying and planning training programs; innovating admissions based on capacity assessment; pioneering in opening new pilot and modern training programs, meeting the requirements of the 4.0 industrial revolution, and integrating with the world's higher education.

A very important highlight is that after 30 years of establishment, from not having a name on the ranking map, in 2022 VNU has risen to the top 800 in the world according to the QS rankings and has a high reputation and ranking in other international rankings such as THE, ARWU. Also in 2022, 6 fields of VNU have entered the top 400-600 in the world in the QS rankings: Mathematics (351-400), Physics (401-500), 3 fields of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering - Electronics, Business and Management Science top 401-500, Computer Science and Information Systems (501-600).
The Engineering and Technology field has been a latecomer, rising dramatically, ranking 386th in the world in the 2022 QS rankings.
The two national universities alone account for nearly 25% of the country's ISI international publications.
VNU has scientists who are highly ranked in the world, among the top scientists with the most citations and influence in the world and in Vietnam. The team of leading scientists, the team of intellectuals - the highly qualified human resources are the strongest potential, the most valuable capital that creates the brand and core values ​​of VNU.

And the final highlight is that in 2022, after many years of incubation, for the first time, VNU successfully brought students to Hoa Lac to study. The Training Department and the training staff rolled up their sleeves to implement the enrollment plan and organize learning and teaching in Hoa Lac; build new majors and new training models (such as comprehensive education), to turn Hoa Lac into an advantage and resource for the development of VNU in the coming period.
In 2022, there were 2,000 VNU students studying full-time at Hoa Lac, and it is expected that in 2023 there will be 7,000 students at Hoa Lac, including students from the High School of Educational Sciences (HES).
These achievements prove the correctness and success of the National University model, truly worthy of being the "main force group", the pillar of the country's university education system.
Proud of the achievements that generations of leaders, generations of teachers and students, generations of talented and dedicated scientists and lecturers, professors, associate professors, doctors of science, doctors - the elite intellectuals of VNU and the country; generations of cadres, civil servants, lecturers, researchers, and the team of responsible and enthusiastic managers of VNU through the periods have contributed and achieved in the past 30 years, at the same time fully aware of the opportunities as well as the challenges in the new situation and context.
Higher education, including VNU, is facing challenges regarding university autonomy, university development models, and universities (and autonomous university models within highly autonomous universities of the two VNUs) in the new context.
Challenges in terms of outstanding development and scale - between quantity and quality, in terms of facilities; in terms of employment for graduates; competition in terms of income for teachers and staff; in terms of training and research quality, in terms of staff quality; in terms of integration with international standards and levels.
Therefore, the Party and State are having drastic directions and effective solutions to strongly innovate Vietnamese higher education and develop the two national universities to new heights.
The Party Committee and Board of Directors of VNU have directed that in the coming time, we will focus on perfecting the university autonomy model, in training activities, we will focus on improving and expanding the scale of training of talented, high-quality programs and programs in the field of engineering and technology; deploying a comprehensive education model for students in Hoa Lac; implementing the project "Attracting and Training Southern Students at VNU"; prioritizing and concentrating resources on training young PhD students and PhDs, attracting talents; developing strong national and international research groups; taking care of nurturing and training leading scientists to create a source of human resources for the next generation; promoting international publications and technology transfer; promoting innovation and entrepreneurship; improving rankings in world university rankings; promoting unified strengths and interconnectivity throughout VNU; Improve practical skills, internships, real-life situations, foreign language proficiency and soft skills for VNU students, thereby improving training quality and job opportunities for learners in the context of Industry 4.0.
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of VNU (1993-2023), looking back on a journey!
Wishing the two National Universities to develop more and more strongly and integrate more and more strongly with the world - to be more and more autonomous and stronger - to always receive the attention, support, and best conditions from the Party, the State, the Ministry of Education and Training, ministries, branches and the whole society to maximize internal strength and attract maximum resources, always worthy of being the locomotive of innovation, the leading university, the pillar in the higher education system of Vietnam, meeting the expectations of society and people of the whole country.