Officially eliminate high-quality programs in universities

According to the Ministry of Education and Training, the 2018 revised Law on Higher Education and Circular No. 17/2021 (regulations on training program standards; development, appraisal and promulgation of training programs at all levels of higher education) do not have the concept of high-quality training programs, there is only one training program standard. This abolition is to implement the 2018 revised Law on Higher Education.

High-quality training programs at some training institutions have tuition fees 2-3 times higher than mass programs. Illustration photo: Nguyen Ba

The newly issued circular will take effect from December 1. Thus, 2023 will be the last year that universities are allowed to enroll in high-quality programs, after which they will be "erased".

Courses that have enrolled in high-quality training programs according to Circular No. 23/2014 will continue to be implemented until the end of the course.

Previously, Circular No. 23/2014 issued regulations on university training programs including mass training programs and high-quality training programs.

Specifically, high-quality training programs are built and developed on the basis of the mass training program of the training institution.

Accordingly, the output standards of high-quality training programs must be higher than those of corresponding mass training programs in terms of professional competence; foreign language competence; information technology application competence; leadership, presiding and teamwork competence; ability to adapt to the working environment; and foreign language competence must be at least level 4/6 according to the 6-level foreign language competence framework for Vietnam (or equivalent).

Educational institutions wishing to open high-quality training programs need to meet a number of accompanying conditions.

High-quality training institutions will be able to decide their own tuition fees, so high-quality programs are considered the "rice bowl" of universities and are increasingly expanding.

Actively use another name "high quality"

Previously, in March 2023, the Ministry of Education and Training solicited opinions on a draft circular to completely abolish Circular 23/2014 (regulations on high-quality university training) and received many mixed opinions because of concerns that if there were no longer high-quality programs, it would greatly affect schools.

At that time, although the Ministry of Education and Training was in the process of collecting opinions to abolish Circular 23, a number of universities proactively removed the high-quality program in the expected enrollment plan for 2023 or replaced it with another name.

Meanwhile, most schools still announced that they will continue to reserve enrollment quotas for high-quality programs.

Specifically, the 2023 enrollment information of schools under Ho Chi Minh City National University no longer includes high-quality programs, but instead has been replaced by other names: "English-taught programs", "international standard training programs"...

Some other schools have dropped the name of the high-quality training program and replaced it with programs that enhance English, enhance French, enhance Japanese, etc.