Education ministry, USAID sign first MOU to improve Vietnam's higher education

Hanoi (VNA) - The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on September 12 announced that it has signed its first-ever Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam (MOET) to improve the quality of Vietnamese higher education.

MOET Minister Nguyen Kim Son and USAID/Vietnam Mission Director Aler Grubbs signed the MOU on September 9 at a ceremony hosted by the MOET.

The MOU builds upon USAID’s decade-long cooperation with Vietnam on higher education partnership programs. The MOU expands USAID’s support to MOET to advance Vietnam’s higher education to be even more innovative and competitive.

“We applaud the Government of Vietnam on its reforms to build a globally-competitive higher education system,” said Mission Director Grubbs during remarks delivered at the ceremony. “This first-ever MOU between USAID and the Ministry of Education and Training marks our ongoing commitment to collaborate on a wide range of higher education partnership programmes that will directly support MOET’s ambitious higher education reform goals.”

Education Minister Son thanked the US Government for its support for Vietnam, especially its in-depth cooperation with Vietnam in terms of education-training and scientific research.

Sharing that Vietnamese higher education was standing in front of a ‘major revolution,’ Son said that in this process, internal efforts were playing a key role, but outside support would also be important, and asked for continued assistance from the US Government and education institutions.

Vietnam’s 2018 Revised Law on Higher Education is prompting significant changes to move the country toward a more open higher education system.

The law sets out details for public universities to have new authorities around curriculum, recruitment, enrolments, and resource mobilisation and management.

USAID said it supported Vietnam’s efforts to modernise its higher education system.

In partnership with US higher education institutions and the private sector, USAID was helping Vietnamese universities to improve academic quality and enhance institutional governance to serve as modern models of higher education and drive Vietnam’s socio-economic development. Many of these programs had connected Vietnamese universities with leading US higher education institutions and private sector companies to develop innovations in teaching and learning, accreditation, curriculum reform, research, and university and industry linkages.

With the signing of the MOU, USAID would support MOET with a new project that would provide direct technical assistance to review and improve higher education policies.

Improving policies would advance university autonomy, quality assurance, digital transformation and innovations in key sectors that are critical to Vietnam’s continued economic growth and development./.