Building a research university: focus on improving the capacity of young staff

- What is the general view of the School in building a research university, sir?

Research universities are a common development trend of universities in the world. Currently, universities with the best training quality and socially recognized positions are all research universities. Therefore, this is also one of the focuses in the long-term development strategy of VNU and the University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

In reality, in Vietnamese universities, training activities often take precedence over research. However, these are two key activities of universities that, if separated, cannot have complementary effects. Without good research, there can be no good teaching.

So what is a research university? The simplest way to understand it is that a research university is a university that focuses on research activities, considering research to be an important, even key, and the foundation for other activities. The quality and effectiveness of scientific research activities contribute to improving the quality of other activities such as training, management, university administration, team building, etc. The quality of research activities is a measure of the prestige and position of a university. High scientific content helps research universities train people with scientific qualifications and thinking, knowledge, scientific management methods, vision and strategic thinking, and humanistic qualities, etc. The scientific foundation of a research university brings many such values.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pham Quang Minh (Vice Rector of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU). (Photo: Thanh Long/USSH)

- What criteria does the University of Social Sciences and Humanities rely on to realize its goal of becoming a research university?

On the roadmap to building a research university, the School identifies 4 important criteria:

The first criterion is the quality of scientific research works and the ability to transfer knowledge. This is the most important factor. This criterion is quantified into numbers such as: how many research works do lecturers publish each year, how many books, textbooks, monographs, scientific articles, etc.? How do these works contribute to solving theoretical and practical, long-term and immediate, scientific and applied, basic and current issues, etc. of the country? This criterion accounts for 50%.

The second criterion is the quality of training activities, meaning that training activities must focus on quality, the main measure of which is the quality and qualifications of the teaching staff, the ratio of students to one lecturer, the ratio of postgraduate students to the total number of students, training content and methods, the rate of students having jobs after graduation, the ability of graduates to meet social requirements, the assessment of recruitment agencies, etc. This criterion accounts for 40%.

The third criterion is the level of internationalization: how many lecturers and students of the school go on exchange abroad each year, how many international scientists and lecturers does the school welcome to research and teach? How many international cooperation programs are there in training and scientific research? The level of compatibility of the school's content, programs, and training methods compared to international universities... This criterion accounts for 5%.

The fourth criterion is the facilities that serve the study and research. This criterion is measured by the library, learning materials, number of classrooms, laboratories, number of computers connected to the network, etc. serving the training and scientific research of the school. This is also an important factor because if the facilities are not modern and synchronous, it is very difficult to conduct research and training activities at a research university.

The above four criteria are the basis for assessing whether a university is a research university or not, but the core and most important thing for a research university is to build a true academic environment, in which creativity, pioneering, democracy, respect for new scientific ideas, a sense of serving the community and for the peaceful and prosperous development of the country are valued.

- In the orientation of building a research university, does the school take into account the specific characteristics of the social sciences and humanities?

Obviously, there are specific challenges for the field of social sciences and humanities. The field of social sciences and humanities is not like other fields such as nature, technology or medicine... because it is related to issues of history, culture, tradition, political institutions and because the concept of values ​​and standards in each country is also different. Therefore, the publication of research results in the field of social sciences and humanities not only by Vietnamese scholars but also by other countries (especially in Asia) is also difficult. In addition, due to a long period of lack of exchange and contact with the outside, there is still a large gap between Vietnamese and international social scientists in terms of methodology, research methods and perspectives, opportunities to access information sources and documents for Vietnamese scientists are very limited and finally there is the language barrier. It must also be emphasized that most of the prestigious social science and humanities journals are in the US and Western countries.

- To implement the above policy, what activities has the school implemented in the past year?

First of all, we are interested in raising awareness of this policy among staff, students and trainees. Dissemination and propaganda activities are carried out regularly and in many ways to help people understand clearly: what is the significance of building a research university for the mission and development of the school. In fact, even in Singapore and Malaysia, their universities have only been interested in building a research university for the past 20 years. But in Vietnam, this policy has only been officially implemented by the National University for a year. Of all the difficulties, changing awareness is probably the biggest. Therefore, the school has taken advantage of every opportunity, through meetings, conferences and seminars, to disseminate to staff and students the policy of building the school into a research university.

During the past school year, the School organized two delegations of key staff to survey and learn from the experience of building research universities at leading universities in Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.

Along with the above activities, the School has also issued many specific policies to support and encourage scientific research activities among staff, students and trainees. Since 2010, the School has had a policy of rewarding staff with scientific works published internationally at 5,000,000/report. Since 2013, this reward level has been adjusted to encourage staff to publish research results in journals with high scientific impact index in the ISI and Scopus categories with corresponding rewards of 12,000,000 VND and 8,000,000/report. The rewards for other international publications are 5 million, 3 million and 2 million. For a long time, according to the School's regulations, each teaching staff member must publish at least one article in domestic scientific journals per year.

To enhance the research capacity of staff, the School also has a regulation to support a staff member with a maximum of 500 USD/year for participation in international seminars and conferences if there is a paper presented at the seminar. However, it must be admitted that this is a very modest amount of funding and in reality, the number of staff using this support is not much. In addition, the School also organizes an average of 20 to 30 international seminars at the school every year to create conditions for staff and students to meet, exchange and interact with foreign scholars.

An activity carried out for the first time in the last school year was to select high-quality research works, books, and scientific articles to translate into English, and then publish them in a reputable scientific journal or publisher abroad. This is a necessary activity to “market” the research of the school’s staff to the international scientific community.

In April 2014, for the first time, the School organized a scientific conference for young staff, postgraduates and graduate students. The conference was a great success, showing the great potential of this team, the expressed aspirations of young staff and promising many prospects in the future. This will be an annual activity of the School, a forum for young staff to announce new research results as well as contribute to promoting academic exchange activities among young staff.

In addition, it is necessary to mention the annual student scientific research activities that are effectively organized, thereby raising awareness and inspiring students about the importance of scientific research, creating momentum for higher education levels. An initial survey among students showed that: more than 80% of students surveyed said that scientific research is necessary and very necessary for students' study and research.

- So what are the most remarkable results after the School implemented a series of the above solutions?

The outstanding result in the past school year was that the staff of the School successfully bid and were assigned to implement 12 State-level research projects along with dozens of ministerial-level, VNU-level and Nafosed-funded projects. This is an impressive number, unprecedented in the School's scientific research activities before. The specific result is that in the past school year, the staff of the School published more than 600 domestic articles, nearly 30 international articles, dozens of quality textbooks, monographs, and reference books and won many awards such as 03 outstanding scientific awards of VNU, Good Book Award, 02 research groups were recognized as strong research groups at VNU-level. If in the 2010-2011 school year, when the reward policy for international publications was first implemented, there were only 7 scientific articles published internationally, but by the 2011-2012 school year, this number had increased to 11 articles, in the 2012-2013 school year it was 21 articles and by this year, according to unofficial data, there have been nearly 30 scientific articles published internationally. These numbers partly show the positive change in the scientific research activities of the school's staff.

But the most important result is that the awareness among staff about the need for international publications for researchers and lecturers has had a positive change. Up to now, at any conference or meeting, it is easy to hear discussions and exchanges about this policy. The staff of the School are excited and make efforts so that their research meets the criteria of scientific journals around the world. In the coming time, the School will also research to have more policies to motivate, encourage and honor staff with quality scientific publications.

- What is the biggest challenge for the University on its path to becoming a research university?

The biggest challenge is to have many high-quality scientific works. Many of our works have not met social needs because of their low quality, lack of applicability, distance from reality, and failure to solve fundamental problems of Vietnamese society. That is not to mention that not many works have achieved international standards. Therefore, the issue of research capacity of the staff and scientists is the key issue.

- What is the school's key solution to this problem, sir?

We must concentrate all resources to improve the research capacity of young cadres. We must send them abroad for training and study at leading advanced universities. We must prioritize investment and support young cadres in research and study activities, especially creating conditions for them to integrate and exchange internationally to learn, gain experience and gain experience. We must start implementing these measures right now so that in the future, we will have a strong team of scientists, well-trained, updated with the latest knowledge and research trends in the world, capable of integrating with the world scientific community.

Thank you for the above discussion.