Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam agreed with the proposal of the State Council of Professors on drafting a document for the Prime Minister stipulating standards and procedures for appointing and dismissing professors and associate professors.

Vice President Nguyen Thi Doan presents a certificate of professorship to Vinh University Principal Dinh Xuan Khoa.

The Deputy Prime Minister assigned the Ministry of Education and Training to preside over and coordinate with the State Council of Professors and relevant agencies to urgently draft documents to replace Decision 174/2008/QD-TTg dated December 31, 2008; Decision 20/2012/QD-TTg dated April 22, 2012 of the Prime Minister and other relevant documents, and submit them to the Prime Minister in January 2016.

The 2005 Law on Education stipulates the standards and procedures for appointment and dismissal of professors and associate professors under the authority of the Prime Minister (Article 71).

In order to implement the above regulations, since 2009, the Prime Minister has issued regulations on standards and procedures for appointment and dismissal of professors and associate professors applicable to the entire university education system (Decision No. 174/2008/QD-TTg dated December 31, 2008 and Decision No. 20/2012/QD-TTg dated April 22, 2012 amending and supplementing Decision No. 174/2008/QD-TTg, and at the same time, the Decision to establish the Council of Professors for the terms 2009 - 2014, 2014 - 2019).
The contents of these decisions fully reflect the basic regulations that serve as the legal basis for consideration, assessment of qualifications and appointment of professor and associate professor titles, including many updated contents and improved quality compared to the regulations in the previous stage.

Recently, the work of recognizing qualifications and appointing professors and associate professors has achieved positive results.

However, in reality, many issues and contents in the above decisions are still limited, general, and not updated. There are even many important specific criteria and standards that are not included in these decisions, but are stipulated in many other guiding legal documents issued by the Minister of Education and Training and the Chairman of the State Council of Professors.

Therefore, the development of a new legal document by the Prime Minister with detailed, specific, comprehensive and complete regulations on this issue on the basis of synthesizing, amending and supplementing the regulations stated in current decisions and documents and updating practices is necessary and needs to be completed soon, not to prolong the situation of having many related documents at all levels regulating the same issue.

According to GDTĐ