Achievements of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in 70 years of tradition - 20 years of construction and development: Postgraduate training

In the period 1993 - 2015, postgraduate training had strong development in terms of organizational structure, professions, scale and training quality.

About management structure:

At the time the University of Social Sciences and Humanities became a member of VNU, the University had 6 faculties authorized to train postgraduate programs: Literature, History, Language, Philosophy, Political Economy and Sociology; the training scale was still small, so the management of postgraduate training was only a part of the Training Department with 2 staff. With the development of training, especially postgraduate training, in December 2004, the postgraduate management department merged with the scientific research management department to form the Scientific Research Management and Postgraduate Training Department (with 5 postgraduate management staff). In response to the development needs and expansion of the postgraduate training scale of the University, in December 2009, the postgraduate management department was separated to form the Postgraduate Training Department with 8 staff. The Department of Postgraduate Training has the function of advising the Board of Directors and handling all tasks related to postgraduate training from proposing, building, implementing and managing training programs, organizing enrollment, managing training, issuing certificates to compiling and publishing textbooks, lectures and reference materials... Currently, 16 faculties in the University have conducted postgraduate training programs, of which 13 faculties have conducted training for both master's and doctoral programs. The Faculty of History and the Faculty of Literature have the most postgraduate training programs (11 programs for each faculty). Therefore, in most faculties, the operation, organization and management of postgraduate training have one officer in the Board of Directors and one assistant. The decentralization of postgraduate training management has been implemented and put into order, in accordance with the postgraduate training regulations and regulations of VNU and the University.

On developing training programs.

Since its establishment, the School has always paid attention to developing postgraduate training programs, always updating and discovering to add new training majors to meet the development needs of society and science; promptly adjusting or eliminating training programs that are not suitable for the socio-economic development needs of the country. In 1993, the School only had 23 postgraduate training programs. Up to now, although the two faculties of Economics and Law were separated to establish new units, the number of postgraduate training programs of the School has increased to 62, including 33 master's programs and 29 doctoral programs (for details, please see Appendix 1). The number of postgraduate training programs developed over the periods is shown in Table 1 as follows:

According to the Master's training regulations on developing application-oriented training programs, the School is currently developing and proposing VNU to approve 6 training programs in this direction. Thus, by the end of 2015, the School will have 39 master's training programs in 33 training majors.

The training programs have been adjusted and updated annually in a modern direction, meeting the needs of international integration and the socio-economic development of the country. The structure, objectives and content of the current training programs have been built in the direction of credit-based training, and output standards have been determined. In addition, more than 400 course outlines of the postgraduate training programs have been adjusted, completed and newly built.

On the scale of training,

In 1993, the enrollment scale at both training levels was still very small, this scale increased rapidly in the following years, the highest master's enrollment scale was in 2012 (860 students), the highest doctoral enrollment scale was in 2013 (146 doctoral students). The results of the university's graduate training scale from the early 2010s to the present have been over two thousand students (see Table 2), bringing the university's graduate student/undergraduate student ratio above 30%.

*Amount of enrollment in the year

Regarding training foreign students, if in the 90s the number of foreign students studying at the university was very small, then in the period 2009 - 2014 the university's postgraduate training attracted quite a lot of foreign students, including many students from China, Korea, Japan, Czech Republic, Thailand, Laos... Majors with specific characteristics of Vietnam such as Vietnamese Linguistics, Anthropology, International Studies, Vietnamese Literature... are attractive to foreign students.

- Training organization and results:From 1993 to present, the school's training organization has changed a lot. In the early period, training was organized according to the year system, but now all work related to training management has been done according to the credit system. The training management software for postgraduates has initially had a positive effect. The process of building and organizing the implementation of master's and doctoral training processes as well as the assessment and evaluation work are increasingly becoming systematic, regular, and planned on the basis of strictly complying with the postgraduate training regulations of VNU as well as other regulations. Training quality is increasingly improved. The number of postgraduates, doctoral students defending their theses and graduating in full compliance with the output standards and on time is increasing. Since 1993, nearly 6,000 graduate students and 480 doctoral students have completed their studies at the school, and have had their degrees recognized by the school or VNU and awarded master's and doctoral degrees. After graduating, the masters and doctors have made good use of the knowledge and experience they gained at the school and have been highly appreciated by society.

General assessment: It can be said that after twenty years, since its establishment, the university's postgraduate training has made great strides in all aspects, from management organization, scale, training quality to training programs, learning materials, textbooks, lectures, etc. If in 1993 there were only 6 faculties with postgraduate training programs, now there is no faculty that does not conduct postgraduate training, many faculties have dozens of programs. Postgraduate training has become a key task in the goal of building the University of Social Sciences and Humanities into a research university.