Ton Duc Thang University climbs 200 places in 2020 ARWU ranking

An aerial view of Ton Duc Thang University’s main campus in Ho Chi Minh City's District 7. (Photo: Vnews.gov.vn)

Hanoi (VNA) – Ho Chi Minh City-based Ton Duc Thang University is the sole Vietnamese representative to enter the 2020 Academic Ranking for World Universities (ARWU)’s top 800, that was released by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy last weekend.

The university placed in the 701-800 band of this year’s list, an improvement from last year’s 901-1000 group.

This year, the Vietnamese university shared the band with several leading world institutes, including the University of Waikato in New Zealand; Università Della Svizzera Italiana in Switzerland; Czech Technical University in Prague in Czech Republic; Université Gustave Eiffel in France; Chulalongkorn University in Thailand; Chungnam National University in the Republic of Korea; Aston University, Heriot-Watt University, City University London in the UK.

The top three in the 2020 ARWU ranking remained unchanged from last year – the US’s Harvard and Stanford Universities and the UK’s Cambridge, respectively.

Starting from 2003, ARWU has been presenting the world top universities annually based on a set of objective indicators and third-party data. It has been recognized as the precursor of global university rankings and one of the most trustworthy league tables, alongside the QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education.

ARWU adopts six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, the number of Highly Cited Researchers and articles indexed in Science Citation Index – Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index based on data in the Web of Science, and per capita performance.

More than 2000 universities are ranked by ARWU every year and the best 1000 universities are published.

Shanghai Ranking Consultancy is an independent organisation dedicating to research on higher education intelligence and consultation. It has been the official publisher of the Academic Ranking of World Universities since 2009.

Established as a private school in 1997 by the Ho Chi Minh City Federation of Labour, Ton Duc Thang became a public school in 2008 after being taken over by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour.

Now the university has two campuses in the country’s southern economic hub, and is home to 16 faculties, 60 research groups and 63 up-to-date undergraduate and graduate programmes with a focus on high quality research, training and internationalisation, and many interdisciplinary research opportunities.

Ton Duc Thang is a pioneer in the piloting of autonomy for tertiary education institutions in Vietnam. The university has also boosted its profile on the global academic map by being consistently listed in world rankings.

It was one of the two Vietnamese universities in 2020 Times Higher Education’s University Impact Rankings for achievements relating to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Last year, it had been named by the UI GreenMetric World University Ranking among the most sustainable universities in the world. It was ranked 165th among 780 universities worldwide, climbing 17 places from 2018 with 6,325 scores in total.

In 2018, Ton Duc Thang University achieved a four-star rating from the UK’s QS Stars University Ratings, which is for “a highly international institution, excellent teaching quality, strong research ability and excellent learning environment."

The QS 4-star rating was also achieved by Western Sydney University (Australia), Bournemouth University (the UK), Thammasat University (Thailand) and University of South Florida.

The same year, the High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (HCERES) recognised the university as being compliant with French and European standards for universities. This accreditation has been granted for a five-year term, from July 2018 to July 2023.

Ton Duc Thang University sets to be named among Asia’s top 60 universities and the world’s top 500 by 2037./.