Vietnam introduces UPM to rate national and regional universities

The Vietnam National University-Hanoi (VNU) has launched a first-ever comparative ranking system named “University Performance Metrics” (UPM) to gear national and regional universities, the Government Portal reported.

UPM was developed by a research team of VNU-Hanoi under the sponsorship from the Ministry of Education and Training’s national educational science program.

The Vietnam National University-Hanoi. Photo: Internet

UPM is a data and analysis center, which can provide consultancy and support to the national higher education system, as well as to national and regional higher education institutions.

UPM can provide reliable information serving the comprehensive comparison and evaluation of the quality of universities under a star rating system.

Dr. Nguyen Huu Duc, former vice president of VNU-Hanoi, who is directly in charge of the system, said that the top 1,000 universities in the world account for about 3% of the total higher institutions worldwide. UPM focuses on the other 97% with more than 28,000 universities which have a major role and contribution but has not been properly appreciated.

Accordingly, the five-star standard universities (especially research-oriented ones) have the ability to qualify for the top 100 universities in Asia.

The four-star universities are those reputable in the country and the region while the three-star universities perform well in market segmentation and engage in student exchange in the region.

So far, nearly 40 universities in Vietnam and in other ASEAN member nations have voluntarily applied the UPM system for quality measuring.

Five research-oriented higher education institutions which meet the five-star standard include VNU-Hanoi, VNU’s two members (University of Natural Sciences and University of Technology), Hanoi University of Technology, and University of Kasetsar (Thailand).

The UPM system follows a trend of matching and staring, whereby, the universities with close performance are ranked in the same group and rated from one to five stars. On the basis of the traditional ranking, UPM has developed more unique criteria of universities in the Industry 4.0 era.

Specifically, UPM includes 8 groups of fields and 54 criteria. Each field has its own benchmark and weight for a total of 1,000 points.

UPM has supported and advised universities in Vietnam and in the ASEAN region to voluntarily apply the system based on collecting and verifying databases from many sources, including quality accreditation data.