Hanoi (VNA)🥂 - "Institutional breakthroughs are needed to pave the way for higher education development,” said Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son to Standing Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Tran Thanh Man at a conference on institutions and policies to improve the quality of higher education in November 5.

Speaking at the conference themed “Education 2023: Institutions and policies to improve the quality of higher education’, Man affirmed one of the most important tasks mentioned in the Resolution of the Party Central Committee on Fundamental and Comprehensive Innovation of Education and Training. Man said it’s an important time for education, as all central agencies are reviewing 10 years of implementing Resolution 29, in order to perfect the mechanisms and policies to improve the quality of education and training, including tertiary education. “Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the current situation, analyze the causes, achieved results, limitations, and thereby propose solutions. The process needs to address inadequacies in institutions and policies to create conditions for higher education to maximize its potential and creativity in training. Education provides the country with qualified and quality human resources to meet the needs of industrialization, modernization and international integration,” Man noted. Experts in higher education institutions discussed current problems, which include reduced investment budgets, dependence on tuition fees, ineffective ordering mechanisms, difficulties in public investment, challenges in implementing university autonomy, and barriers in scientific research, among others. However, according to Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son, opinions are still about how to help higher education institutions survive, reduce hardship, and find a way to improve.

Institutional breakthroughs are needed

Minister Son said the development has yet to meet expectations. But he affirmed that higher education is still developing with the number of schools and majors, as well as the scale of training increasing, the quality of the staff increasing, and the ranking of universities improving in the international arena. According to him, for public universities, if there is to be a breakthrough improvement, there must be both social mobilisation and more investment. How to invest effectively is also a problem because many universities cannot disburse funds and have to return public investment capital. Stating that budget investment is "already rare and difficult to spend", the Minister said that investment resources and creating a breakthrough in higher education are issues that need to be discussed. Son said that self-reliance is a must for international higher education, and it is a challenging issue in Vietnam with many obstacles. Minister Son stressed the need to create a synchronous legal corridor to exercise in-depth, unencumbered autonomy./.