THE PRIME MINISTER

Pursuant to the Education Law of December 2, 1998;

Pursuant to the Government�s Resolution No. 18/2000/NQ-CP of November 30, 2000 at its November 2000 regular meeting;

At the proposal of the Minister of Education and Training in Report No. 713/KHTC of February 2, 2001 on the Project on the "Planning on the network of Vietnam�s universities and colleges in the 2001-2010 period",

DECIDES:

Article 1.- To approve the "Planning on the network of Vietnam�s universities and colleges in the 2001-2010 period" with the following basic contents:

1. The planning�s objectives:

a/ To build a network of universities and colleges meeting the human resource training demands, conforming with the socio-economic development targets, strengthening national defense and security, thereby serving the cause of national industrialization and modernization;

b/ To bring into play the combined strength of the system of universities and colleges and the entire society; ensure the diversity, synchronism and step by step raise the quality, of human resource training;

c/ To create favorable conditions for people of different strata to have the opportunity to get the post- senior high school education.

2. The planning�s principles:

The development of the network of universities and colleges must:

a/ Conform with the socio-economic development strategies of the country, each region and each locality; ensure the rational structures of branches and trades, of different standards, areas and regions;

b/ Suit the State�s investment capacity and the mobilization of resources of the entire society; link training to scientific research, production and service provision; and step by step overcome the raggedness and scatteredness of the current system.

c/ Concentrate the investment on the national universities, targeted universities and colleges and key domains; at the same time, ensure the correlation between different training forms and levels;

d/ Ensure the conformity of the implementation steps with the practical conditions as well as the training quality and stability for development.

3. The planning�s contents:

a/ The system of universities and colleges:

- The system of universities and colleges is composed of: national universities, regional universities, key universities, institutes, universities, colleges, open universities and community colleges.

- To rationally develop semi-public, people-founded, private and 100% foreign-invested universities and colleges. To study the transformation of a number of public universities and colleges into the semi-public and people-founded ones. To strive to achieve by the year 2010 the target that the number of non-public university and college students shall represent 30% of the total number of students.

- To build an unclosed system of universities and colleges with different forms of association between units within universities or colleges and between universities and colleges in order to raise the training quality and ensure the training�s high efficiency.

b/ Training scale:

On the basis of the demand for human resource development and the training capacity of the national education system, in the initial stage to increase the annual training development rate by around 5% on average. To strive to achieve by the year 2010 the target of around 200 university and college students per ten thousand of people. The information technology and a number of other key technical and technological branches shall be given priority to quickly develop their training scale in order to meet the requirements of the Party�s and State�s strategic orientations.

c/ Structure of training specialties:

- To restructure the training specialties along the following directions: increasing the training proportion of technical and technological specialties, agriculture, forestry and aquaculture, health care, pharmacy, culture and arts, physical training and sports; ensuring a rational training proportion of natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, law, economics, finance and business administration. To promptly restructure the training specialties in compatibility with the socio-economic development demand;

- To prioritize the training of human resources with suitable degree and high quality in such technological fields as information, biology, new materials, machine building, automation and a number of branches in service of agricultural industrialization and rural development. To give priority to the training of a contingent of experts, senior public servants and good economic managers reaching the regional standards in the fields of economics, finance, banking and administration. To attach importance to the renovation of training contents in the field of social sciences and humanities;

- To further strengthen teachers-training and technical teachers-training colleges so that they will be able to train enough teachers with high quality. To develop the training scale and raise the quality of the training of medical workers for the grassroots establishments, and a contingent of cultural, physical training and sport activists in localities.

d/ Structure of training levels:

- To formulate and standardize the structure of training levels; to work out solutions to ensure the correlation between different training levels;

- To raise the rate of trained laborers to around 40% by the year 2010. To step by step restructure training levels so that 6% of the laborers have the university or college degree, 8% have the vocational high-school degree and 26% have the technical workers� degree;

- To prioritize the training of high-grade technical workers and technicians with the college degree.

e/ Geographical location of universities and colleges:

- For Hanoi capital and Ho Chi Minh city: To concentrate investment on the building and development of Hanoi National University, Ho Chi Minh National University, the two key Teachers Training Universities and a number of other major universities. To strengthen and upgrade the existing universities and colleges. To establish a number of universities and colleges in the key domains to meet the national industrialization and modernization requirements in conformity with the development plannings of the cities.

Universities and colleges in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city should take the lead in the course of integration with the regional and international tertiary and college education; diversify forms of domestic and overseas investment, enter into association with internationally-prestigious universities and colleges in order to raise the training quality.

- For the Mekong river delta: To strengthen and develop the existing universities and colleges, and continue preparation for the establishment of a number of universities and colleges when conditions permit, with a view to raising the number of students per ten thousand of population in each locality.

- For Northwestern mountainous region and Central Highlands: To concentrate investment on the development of the Central Highland University and Northwestern University so as to raise their capacity to admit students and play the leading role in training high-qualification human resources and assisting the training establishments as well as scientific and technological research institutions in the regions.

- For other regions: To upgrade material bases and renovate equipment and facilities of the existing universities and colleges in order to raise their training quality; to open a number of universities and colleges in the densely-populated areas, where arise demands for training but exist no universities or colleges, so as to meet the human resource demands in these regions.

- For hi-tech parks and key economic zones: To establish a number of technology universities and colleges inside or near hi-tech parks and key economic zones to raise the training efficiency, to link training to technological research and application, thus directly meeting the human resource demands in such hi-tech parks and key economic zones.

The establishment of new universities and colleges must conform with the structure of training specialties, training levels and human resource demands of the whole country in general and of each region in particular; and must satisfy all the prescribed conditions in order to ensure the training quality.

f/ On the contingent of lecturers:

- On the quantity: To work out an appropriate plan and mechanism to quickly increase the quantity and quality of university and college lecturers; to strive to achieve the following student-lecturer ratios by the year 2010:

+ From 5 to 10 students/1 lecturer, for the training of gifted students;

+ From 10 to 15 students/1 lecturer, for training in scientific, technical and technological specialties;

+ From 20 to 25 students/1 lecturer, for training in social sciences, humanities, economics and business administration.

- On the professional qualifications: at least 50% of lecturers to have master and doctor degrees. To mobilize qualified scientists and managers to give lectures in universities and colleges.

h/ On material and technical bases:

- To concentrate investment on the building of the two national universities at new locations with the planning thereon already approved by the Prime Minister. To strengthen material bases for the two key teachers-training universities and other key universities.

- To mobilize all resources for upgrading the material and technical bases of the entire tertiary education system. To strive to achieve by the year 2010 the average norm of 6m2 of study space for every student; to upgrade, renovate and modernize equipment and facilities of laboratories, apprentice workshops and practice establishments; to step by step apply new teaching technologies in universities and colleges.

- Regarding the organization:

To draft and issue legal documents on the criteria and statutes of universities and colleges; regulations on organization and operation of universities and colleges of different types; criteria, conditions and procedures for the establishment, separation and merger of universities and colleges or upgrading of schools into colleges or universities; criteria, conditions and main tasks of the key universities and colleges as well as community colleges; criteria, conditions and procedures for the establishment of foreign training institutions in Vietnam.

To maintain the existing model of the universities in Hue, Da Nang and Thai Nguyen. To reorganize universities and colleges so that their affiliates or second establishments are not too far away therefrom. To rename the tertiary training institutions in accordance with the provisions of the Education Law.

To strengthen teachers-training colleges in 61 provinces and cities throughout the country, ensuring the task of teachers training and fostering. In a number of localities, where conditions permit, to open in such colleges a number of training specialties of college or lower level in order to meet the local demands for human resources and mobilize the community�s resources; to study the formulation of a number of programs for transition to universities with a view to creating more opportunities for pupils of rural, deep-lying and remote areas to have access to tertiary education.

The expansion of training specialties and domains in universities as well as the development of open and correspondence training forms must be based on the general planning on the structure of training specialties and meet all the necessary conditions to ensure the training quality.

To encourage the combination of training with research and application in the big economic organizations.

- Regarding material and technical bases:

To increase investment in universities and colleges with State budget capital, borrowed capital and foreign non-refundable aid, capital mobilized from the society and other sources in order to meet the training requirements. To concentrate the State�s investment on the construction of new establishments of the two National Universities at the locations already approved by the Prime Minister; to invest in training specialties with priority given to the key universities and colleges.

To boost investment in building material bases for scientific and technological research activities in universities. To increase the investment level in scientific and technological research in general and basic sciences in particular, for universities, in conformity with each university�s training tasks and advantages in scientific and technological research.

To step by step carry out the planning on land, building of schools, classes, modern laboratories and libraries, student hostels, cultural and sports centers and service facilities of national standard in order to meet the immediate requirements and create conditions for future development.

To create mechanism for all universities and colleges to renovate their own material and technical bases as well as facilities.

- Regarding the renovation of training:

The Ministry of Education and Training shall have to work out the general plan and direct universities and colleges to elaborate orientations and detailed plans in order to:

Renovate and modernize the training contents and programs; formulate mechanisms and policies in compiling programs, writing and publishing textbooks according to the contents of the programs which are modernized and updated regularly; ensure enough textbooks and learning materials for students;

Renew teaching and learning methods at the tertiary level;

Basically renew the way of evaluating the students� study and examination results;

To formulate a flexible training process; to step by step transform the year-based training regime into the certificate-based study regime. To work out the transformation programs and regulations on the correlation between different training levels and forms as well as different training establishments with a view to creating the equality in study opportunities or career change for people of all strata.

To elaborate general provisions on the practice and fact-finding regimes for students; on that basis, the universities and colleges shall work out detailed programs and plans and organize practice and fact-finding trips for their students in a good and efficient manner in the course of the latter�s study. To promote forms of association between training institutions and production and/or business establishments as well as the State bodies and localities in order to create conditions for students to successfully complete their practice and fact-finding trips.

To formulate a system of training norms and criteria for different types of universities and colleges and training forms. To evaluate the training quality in the entire system of universities and colleges.

- On the building of the contingent of lecturers:

The Ministry of Education and Training and universities and colleges shall promptly work out plans to develop the contingent of lecturers, training and fostering them, raising their qualifications in order to satisfy the immediate and long-term development demands.

To prioritize the training of high-degree lecturers under the State programs on sending lecturers for training abroad; to draft and promulgate policies on the recruitment of full-time lecturers, contractual lecturers, guest lecturers and part-time lecturers as well as the regime of support for training and fostering lecturers in universities and colleges of different types.

- Regarding the management:

To resolutely and promptly renovate the mechanism of tertiary education management. To pay special attention to raising the capability, quality and efficiency of State management; to elaborate the branch development strategy and plan; to formulate mechanisms and policies as well as regulations on the management of training contents and quality; to organize inspection, examination and evaluation.

To enhance the planning capacity; to forecast the scale and structure of training specialties and levels of the contingent of laborers, thus meeting the human resource demands of society; to effect the State�s regulatory role through the renovation of the mechanism of assigning quotas, allocating capital and contracting wage funds for universities and colleges in order to create a reasonable relationship between the training scale, quality and efficiency.

To enhance the universities� and colleges� right to take initiative in their activities and take self-responsibility therefor.

To train the contingent of education and training managers at the State level as well as in universities and colleges, and raise the quality thereof.

- To focus on the reasonable expansion of training specialties in the existing universities and colleges. To establish a number of universities only when they are deemed really necessary, fully meet the prescribed conditions and conform with the regional planning. To establish a number of technical and technological colleges in key economic zones and a number of community colleges in localities on the basis of the maximum exploitation of domestic and overseas resources.

- To concentrate the direction on realizing solutions for training management and organization, building the contingent of lecturers and enhancing the material and technical bases with a view to creating an important change in the training quality.

- To review, detect and redress irrationalities in the system of universities and colleges. To rectify the management and organization of training in non-public universities and colleges, open universities and in-service training. To assign management responsibilities to universities and colleges.

- To draw experiences on the State management over universities and colleges so as to clarify functions of the Ministry of Education and Training, the specialized ministries and local administrations. In principle, not to transfer a number of universities and colleges from the Ministry of Education and Training to other ministries or branches. The Government shall consider and decide such transfer only when it is really necessary.

- To forecast the demand and prepare conditions for further construction of new universities and colleges.

- To review, draw experiences and propose necessary adjustments on the planning�s contents and solutions for the second period.

- To continue realizing objectives of the planning on the network of universities and colleges and make adjustments on the planning�s contents and solutions through the practical implementation at the first stage.

Article 2.- Organization of implementation of the project.

On the basis of this Decision, the Ministry of Education and Training, the concerned ministries and branches, the provinces and centrally-run cities as well as the universities and colleges shall finalize the detailed plannings. The Ministry of Education and Training shall draft and issue guiding legal documents; sum up and elaborate the annual implementation plans and report them to the Prime Minister before their implementation.

Article 3.- This Decision takes effect 15 days after its signing.

Article 4.- The ministers, the heads of the ministerial-level agencies, the heads of the agencies attached to the Government and the presidents of the People�s Committees of the provinces and centrally-run cities shall have to implement this Decision.

For the Prime Minister
Deputy Prime Minister
PHAM GIA KHIEM