Creating first-rate university by 2020 a far-fetched goal: expert

Thanh Nien Daily: In an interview with a local newswire, you said Vietnam hasn’t quite specified which ranking the country wanted its universities to be listed under. So is the government just talking about goals based on numbers, which does not serve as a useful direction for the country’s higher education?

Professor Simon Marginson: In an age of knowledge-intensive production, the cost of not addressing the global knowledge economy issues would be to become over-dominated by established knowledge-economy powers such as the USA and emerging knowledge giants such as China.

So such a goal is not meaningless. It is however ambiguous as presently stated.

Interpreting the present policy goal, there are two possibilities. The first is the goal as defined by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute of Higher Education ranking. This is the most credible ranking but is solely confined to research capacity and performance.

The second is the goal as defined by the Times Higher (QS Marketing) ranking. This claims to cover all aspects of university performance but uses flawed definitions and methods. For example, its “academic peer review” survey has a 1 percent response rate weighted in favor of the former British Empire countries that do exceptionally well in the ranking.

You said the goal to have one Vietnamese university in the world’s top 200 by 2020 would not be possible. We might have to wait until 2060 or even later. Why so?

In a nutshell [that is the case] assuming that the Jiao Tong is the standard... [This is because] Vietnam is unlikely to have Nobel Prize winners (30 percent of the Jiao Tong index) in the foreseeable future as practically none have been awarded to scientists working in emerging nations.

Then Vietnam National University would need to perform well on all the other Jiao Tong criteria – for example, number of high citation researchers in the top 250-300 in their field worldwide (20 percent), articles in science and nature (20 percent), number of articles/citations in established academic journals (20 percent).

The top 200 is a very high level - standout knowledge economies like Finland that have built their position over centuries have just one top 200 university.

Mainland China does not have a Jiao Tong top 200 university yet and it has been investing in universities at an exceptionally high rate for 15 years. South Korea, which increased its number of scientific publications by four times between 1995 and 2005, has one top 200 university. But South Korea's average income is about ten times that of Vietnam. The only nation with a level of per capita income similar to Vietnam that has two universities in the Jiao Tong top 500 - not the 200 - is India. India has built a small number of wealthier enclaves in its higher education system.

Currently, neither VNU nor any other institution offers international standard salaries and research infrastructure. The nation is currently producing 200 scientific papers annually in mainstream English language science and social science journals compared to almost 4,000 in Singapore, which has one university in the top 200.

I estimate it takes 10 to 12 years of stellar investment in research universities - that means funding at Singapore's level - to show up as high volume in science citation and another half generation for that high citation work to show up in the actual citation counts in the Jiao Tong ranking.

If Vietnam decided to build an international standard research university or two, and went about this realistically, it might be able to achieve a Jiao Tong top 500 university by 2025 or 2030.

The top 200 could only be reached after sustained effort over a couple of generations. That’s why I suggested the nominal target year of 2060.

You mentioned that in the Shanghai Jiao Tong global university research ranking, countries such as Mexico, Brazil, and India are listed because they’ve been putting money into a small group of research intensive universities. Why isn’t it possible for Vietnam to do the same?

It is possible for Vietnam to invest at relatively high levels in a small group of universities, or like Mexico, in one major national university. An emphasis on science and research at internationally competitive levels would need to be balanced against the nation's need to lift the level of participation in mass tertiary education as a whole.

But if the investment is high enough both goals can be achieved.

For Vietnam to establish a world-class university, many experts say it’s more about policies and outdated teaching methods than funding. What are your thoughts on this?

I agree with those who argue that continuous modernization, transparency and a performance culture are essential elements in moving forward in the universities.

If the nation wants its university professionals to perform at internationally competitive levels, it is necessary to: (1) Develop them as autonomous professionals capable of taking initiatives and adding value, not people who blindly follow orders or procedural rules, (2) Provide equally modernized and effective managers that support the academic effort, and (3) Provide adequate training and retraining for both the academic staff and the managers/administrators.

Another vital element is the need to provide adequate opportunities for younger highly-trained people, including those returning from international PhD training. Not using the returnees effectively would be to waste the money invested in training them and miss the opportunity for new initiatives that can take the universities forward on the basis of international and national best practice.

What else should be done?

Infrastructures, support for younger researchers around the top people, excellent access to journals via electronic databases, and frequent opportunities to work internationally and stay in touch with the cutting edge of the field.

Reported by Huong Le