2025-2026 Academic Year: Higher Education Seizes the Opportunity for Breakthrough Development

Photo caption — Candidates take the capacity assessment test at the exam site of Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, Ho Chi Minh City National University. Photo: VNA

Speaking at the Conference, Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son emphasized: We are facing a great opportunity to develop higher education. This is an opportunity, an important breakthrough point. If we do not promptly grasp and promote the advantages, we will miss the beat. Therefore, the thinking that needs to be raised at this time is how not to miss the opportunity, take advantage of the opportunity, and complete the mission of developing higher education.

Faced with many issues, the Minister said that it is necessary to unify perceptions to take the right action. With Resolution 71-NQ/TW, looking at it systematically, the guiding spirit of the Politburo is a more correct view of the position and role of higher education with appropriate investment; hoping that universities will develop faster, stronger, and with clearer orientation, thereby having a team of highly qualified human resources, especially in the field of national demand. The Resolution places very high requirements on the quality and training of talents; especially for public universities, the orientation and leadership must be higher. Along with that, creating the most favorable conditions for non-public higher education institutions to develop.

The Minister said: The amendment of the Law on Higher Education that is being carried out also has a corresponding orientation to institutionalize the spirit of Resolution 71-NQ/TW; that is, adjusting a number of contents on state management of educational institutions. The Ministry will reduce the contents of direct intervention; implement more decentralization and delegation of power.

Specifically, the Ministry will focus on three tasks: granting licenses, revoking licenses, closing down, and dissolving to exercise state management rights; appointing, dismissing, transferring, and rotating leaders; and approving strategies, missions, and goals of public higher education institutions. Schools are given greater autonomy in academics, finance, science, and training; but governance responsibilities must also be clearer.

Regarding the autonomy of higher education institutions regardless of financial autonomy, the Minister shared: In the near future, the Government will issue a separate Decree. The Ministry will advise the Prime Minister, the Government, and the Ministry of Finance to strongly shift from regular financial support to the form of ordering and direct support through learners so that schools can be more proactive in terms of revenue sources.

Affirming that there are many things that the higher education system needs to implement in new directions, the Minister hopes that higher education institutions need to more quickly implement a number of training fields linked to high technology needs; more quickly implement the digital transformation process, and apply artificial intelligence throughout the industry.

The Minister added that the Ministry is currently submitting to the National Assembly the National Target Program on Modernizing Higher Education, with huge investment resources. Therefore, investment preparation and disbursement for infrastructure, construction of schools, laboratories, and research centers need to be implemented urgently, otherwise it will directly affect the progress.

Reporting at the Conference, Professor - Dr. Nguyen Tien Thao, Director of the Department of Higher Education (Ministry of Education and Training) highlighted the achievements of higher education in the 2024-2025 school year and the remaining difficulties and limitations; proposed implementing key tasks for the 2025-2026 school year in higher education.

In recent years, higher education institutions have focused on developing research capacity, affirming their key role in the national network of science and technology organizations. The number of scientific publications in the WoS/Scopus catalog has gradually increased, in which higher education institutions contribute about 85%.

Thanks to research achievements, more and more Vietnamese higher education institutions are entering prestigious international rankings; many scientific research works and products are transferred, commercialized, and effectively applied in practice, making a significant contribution to training high-quality human resources to serve the country's socio-economic development.

WoS has just announced the ranking of research article achievements in the first half of 2025 of higher education institutions in Vietnam (SARAP Ranking 2025-0.5). Accordingly, the top 10 leading higher education institutions in Vietnam in terms of research article achievements in the first half of 2025 have had a breakthrough change compared to the same period in the first half of 2024.

Ho Chi Minh City National University with 850 WoS research articles, contributing 13.18% to the country's achievements, ranked first, Hanoi National University ranked second with 510 articles, accounting for 7.91% of the country, Hanoi University of Science and Technology ranked third with 373 articles, accounting for 5.79% of the country.

The remaining schools in the top 10 include: Duy Tan University, Ho Chi Minh City University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Can Tho University, Hue University, Phenikaa University, Ton Duc Thang University, Van Lang University and Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics.

Regarding the opening of training majors, in 2024 alone, 215 undergraduate majors, 75 master's majors and 27 doctoral majors will be opened under an autonomous mechanism. This is an important step forward, creating conditions for schools to quickly meet human resource needs in high-tech fields such as artificial intelligence and big data.

In addition to the achievements, higher education also faces some difficulties and challenges. The financial mechanism for science, technology, innovation and digital transformation activities in general and in higher education institutions in particular still has many problems in allocating expenditures, bidding, and settlement to unlock non-state financial resources for science and technology activities. Currently, not many businesses are interested in investing and linking with training institutions in scientific research, development and technological innovation, so there are not many technology transfer activities.

There are many scientific and technological human resources in training institutions, but there is a lack of leading scientists in some key fields, scientists with international qualifications capable of solving major scientific and technological problems, and important national projects; and a lack of chief engineers capable of presiding over large-scale scientific and technological projects.

Orienting the key tasks for the 2025-2026 school year with higher education, the Ministry of Education and Training and training institutions will focus on implementing Resolution 71-NQ/TW of the Politburo on breakthroughs in education and training development; Resolution 57-NQ/TW on breakthroughs in science, technology, innovation and national digital transformation; mobilizing all resources to improve capacity and operational efficiency, creating a strong shift in the quality of training and research throughout the system; well preparing the premises for the new development stage of higher education, implementing strategic breakthroughs in human resources, especially high-quality human resources in key fields and sectors.

At the Conference, representatives of training institutions also exchanged and discussed the development of teaching staff, promoting scientific research and AI application... to improve the quality of Vietnamese higher education.

Source: https://baotintuc.vn/giao-duc/nam-hoc-20252026-giao-duc-dai-hoc-nam-bat-thoi-co-de-phat-trien-but-pha-20250918172407589.htm