Quality of scientific research and world ranking of public and private universities in vietnam

Quality of scientific research and world ranking of public and private universities in Vietnam Nguyen Minh Ngoc* Ho Chi Minh City University of Finance – Marketing, Vietnam Email: nmng

Quality of scientific research and world ranking of public and private universities in Vietnam

Nguyen Minh Ngoc*

Ho Chi Minh City University of Finance – Marketing, Vietnam

Email: nmngoc@ufm.edu.vn

*Corresponding author

Nguyen Hoang Tien

Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry, Vietnam

Email: tiennh@hufi.edu.vn

Abstract: This study investigates the issues related to the current state of

quality of research and publication; their impacts on world rankings of universities in Vietnam This is important as observing ongoing trend in higher education’s competition and in accordance with its nature, creating new knowledge through research and publication seems to be the most essential criteria that position university in the rankings (Clarke, 2007; Salamzadeh

et al., 2014) As a consequence, beside the literature review on the subject of research, this study applied multi-aspect comparative method to analyse ten best public and private universities in Vietnam (according to the latest national ranking) Their current state of research and publication quality is both subjectively and objectively (with reference to related works of other authors) examined to propose implications to enhance the quality of research and publication and, as the way to boost their position in the world regional and international rankings

Keywords: scientific research; world university ranking; Vietnamese

university; Vietnam

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Ngoc, N.M and Tien, N.H

(xxxx) ‘Quality of scientific research and world ranking of public and private universities in Vietnam’, Int J Public Sector Performance Management,

Vol X, No Y, pp.xxx–xxx

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1 Introduction

Participation in the university ranking is now a prevailing trend that spreads across the globe and has attracted interests and concerns not only of the managers of higher education institutions, education researchers and business world The university ranking also attracts the attention of the whole community, professional associations, including business leaders of many countries (Van Tien et al., 2021) Position of universities on the influential ranking tables such as academic ranking of world universities (ARWU), times higher education (THE) or Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World is considered as the face

of the quality of national education system Many university leaders have faced heavy criticism when their institution is ranked lower than the public expectations Even in many countries, university ranking results are still used as important indicators in higher education development strategies and some universities are favourably selected for special investment due to being present in the highly ranked group in the regional and global university ranking tables (Usher and Savino, 2007) Through participating in the rankings, universities must further improve the quality of training, scientific research and social services (Linh and Trinh, 2015) The most important difference between higher education and lower level of education is that higher education institutions (or universities) have a mission not only to transfer knowledge to the society but also to create new knowledge through scientific research and publication (Clarke, 2007; Tien et al., 2020c; Salamzadeh et al., 2014) As such, in most of prestigious world university rankings, scientific research related criteria are the most essential among other criteria also heavily considered during scientific advancement process of individual scientist and the accreditation process of a given institution (Ngoc and Tien, 2020; El-Khawas, 2001;

Dana, 2001, 1994) Hence, the quality of scientific research and related activities is the most important factor that impacts the ranking position of universities This is also the case of Vietnamese universities In this article, we will analyse and compare the most important and influential world university rankings to determine how quality of scientific research as part of quality assurance determinant impact sustainably the ranking position

of the selected and assessed universities (Tien et al., 2019, 2021a, 2021b; Ngoc et al., 2021; Stella, 2002) In relation to Vietnamese universities as objects of research in this article we will examine their current state of scientific research activities and point out the ways to enhance them to improve the universities’ positions in different international ranking tables, the image and reputation of Vietnam’s higher education industry

Articles published in the International Journal of Public Sector Performance Management so far have often focused on research on issues related to efficiency and

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effective management of economic activities in different industries within the public sector of developed and developing countries around the world In order to contribute to one of streams of research of this journal, this article is the first to carry out comparative study of performance in higher education in public and private universities with very different characteristics and competitive background in Vietnam, one of developing countries in the world

2 Theoretical framework

2.1 University ranking and ranking criteria in the world

University ranking is to locate a given university in the higher education system at the national, regional or global scope University ranking is to evaluate each of universities according to a common set of criteria in a way that can be compared with each other to determine whether its rank is high or low in the level of attainment regarding these criteria among selected universities When the higher education industry enters the stage

of world integration, the ranking of university poses as an indispensable requirement of society about the right to be informed on the quality of its education activities (Usher and Savino, 2007) The university ranking systems turn out to define the location of universities in the national, regional and global scope Through that, it serves the competition and development of the higher education industry With methodological disadvantages and advantages, the differences in approach, the lack of sources of objective data that are full, sufficient and reliable, it is hard to have a system of university ranking that guarantee a consensus from many sides, for example such as: academic and entrepreneurial (Kehm and Stensaker, 2009; Guerrero et al., 2014) There are many systems in the world today university rankings, but these following ranking systems are considered to be the most prominent today They include: ARWU, THE and QS World (Sanoff, 2007)

2.1.1 ARWU by Shanghai Jiaotong University, born in 2003

The ARWU rating and ranking system was born for the main purpose to find out the distance between Chinese higher education and world class universities The ARWU system uses five criteria (ARWU, 2020):

1 the quality of alumni calculated by the number of students receiving prestigious awards (Nobel prize, industry award, etc.)

2 the quality of lecturers (using similar method to measure alumni quality), the results

of research (measured by the number of articles published in the scientific journals), the scale of the university (in performance relative to the size of the school)

With the above criteria, the ARWU system leans towards research university, focus on the research achievements of the faculty and alumni, but not focusing on other factors such as training programs, satisfaction of students Although there are still disadvantages, the ARWU system also has a great influence on leaders of countries, university administrators as well as the public and the whole society The ARWU system mainly considers scientific achievements of universities, using data from available information

sources of third parties, and does not use data provided by the universities themselves

The very strict criteria on scientific achievements make ARWU system only suitable for research universities of developed countries, mainly the Anglo-American and European

Join the ARWU system is still a hope and requires great efforts for a few leading research universities in Asia and other parts of the world

2.1.2 THE, born in 2010

THE rating and ranking system was born in 2010 (after separating from THE-QS rating system which was born in 2004) THE system is based on three criteria (research quality, teaching quality and level of internationalisation) with 13 evaluation indicators Every year, THE conducts an in-depth research project and publishes the world’s top 400 universities renowned for the quality of their teaching and research The parameters are collected, analysed and verified by Thomson Reuters Data Corporation with the engagement of 50 top experts from 15 countries of different continents THE ranking method focuses on combining hard criteria and soft criteria Soft criteria reflect the influence of society on the university through academic prestige and opinions of employers Hard criteria accounting for 84.62% and soft criteria accounting for 15.38%

As can be seen, the data serving the survey and survey criteria are partly assessed as incomplete although the number of scientists participating in the survey is increasing year

by year Analysis of the data collection steps of THE method shows that the data source

is collected mainly based on three ways: data based on social survey, data from third party and data provided by universities themselves In THE 2011 rankings, universities that provide data for assessing criteria account for a relatively high percentage, equivalent

to 61.54% out of the total (THE, 2014) This proves that universities providing data for ranking are indispensable because only universities themselves can understand all their aspects and development However, universities can adjust and regulate their activities so that indicators can be changed to achieve higher position in the ranking This shows that universities in developing countries can participate in THE ranking in the future, having carefully studied to understand THE rating system and related criteria and indicators, invest in maintaining a very good database, provide sufficient data for to answer fully the questions of the surveys With its worldwide influence in terms of research, lecturers, students, according to such criteria, there is a matter of time for universities from developing countries to participate in THE ranking system

2.1.3 Quacquarelli Symonds world university ranking system was born in 2010

THES/THE-Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) rating system was maintained from 2004 to

2009 After the cooperation between THE and QS has ended, the company QS choose a new partner, US News, to build the QS World ranking system In addition to the list of

400 universities with the highest scores in the world each year, the QS World rankings also offer sub-tables by continent, including: QS Asia University Rankings, QS Latin American University Rankings, QS BRICS University Rankings for the world’s four largest developing nations including Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (QS, 2020a)

Every year QS organises over 200 higher education conferences and exhibitions with the participation from more than 1,000 universities across the continents More than 46,000 scholars and 25,000 recruiting companies have contributed their views in the

survey of universities in the global scale The QS World ranking system focuses on four aspects (QS, 2020b): research quality, teaching quality, graduated students’ quality and the internationalisation capabilities of universities in the world Criteria and weights of the QS Word rankings based on assessment from both outside and inside of the university, including survey results, academic peer-review and employer survey, student/faculty ratio members, number of articles cited, number of international students and lecturers Similar to the ranking method of THE, QS World ranking method also uses

a combination of hard (66.67%) and soft criteria (33.33%) The Analysis of the data collection steps of QS World method shows that the data sources are collected mainly based on 3 ways: social investigation and survey; third party databases and data provided

by the universities themselves In the QS university rankings, the universities providing data for the criteria assessment account for a relatively high rate, equivalent to 50% On the other hand, by consulting all stakeholders, although heavily subjective, QS World is often criticised by researchers as being unscientific But it also that the reputation of a university is based on the real achievements in all aspects including research, teaching teach, and service, not just focus solely in the field of research In fact, there are now many countries in Southeast Asia to join the QS ranking system and entered the top 500, even top 200 and top 300 like Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia So the ability of other universities from developing nations to appear in the QS ranking is completely doable, if they know how to use the criteria of the QS rating system to analyse their strengths and weaknesses, then increase the investment to improve and fix the weak points along with exploring inherent strengths

2.2 Scientific research related criteria in the university ranking 2.2.1 Academic ranking of world universities

The ARWU ranking is a relatively popular university ranking system which is objective, transparent, reliable and it gives stable results today The ARWU ranking primarily looks

at the scientific achievements of the schools, using data from available third-party information sources, not use data provided by the universities themselves Table 1 below presents ARWU’s scoring structure of groups of assessment criteria in which criteria and groups of criteria related to scientific research contribute at least 60% (HiCi, Pub, Cit and part of PCP) as the academic performance also or even principally means research performance

The scientific research related criteria including HiCi, Pub and Cit are equally weighted equal to 20% in the scoring structure These are important quantitative criteria that can represent general scientific performance for R&D institutions and research universities These criteria are all quantifiable with reliable scientific basis and are considered mandatory criteria when evaluating organisations For developing countries, these criteria are still relatively high to reach (published in prestigious journals in ISI master journal list including SCI, SCIE, SSCI and AHCI), or due to the specific of humanities and social sciences, their publications in these journals are still limited (Binh and Khuong, 2015)

Table 1 Scoring structure of groups of assessment criteria ARWU

Teaching quality Number of alumni who are scientists of the

institution receiving Nobel Prize and Fields Award

Alumni 10%

Teacher quality Number of scientists of the organisation receiving

the Nobel Prize or the Fields Award

Number of scientists with high scientific citations belongs principal scientific majors

Research results Number of articles published in indexed journals Pub 20%

Number of both natural and social science citations Cit 20%

Average academic performance

Source: ARWU (2013)

2.2.2 Times higher education and Quacquarelli Symonds

Published every year since 2009, the ranking has produced a list of the top universities each year The assessment and ranking proposed by the QS World ranking table is based

on seven main indicators and is divided into three groups of criteria, including: a group of criteria for research quality; a group of criteria for assessing the quality of teaching and a group of criteria for assessing the level of international relations for a given university

The criteria used were based on consultations with experts as independent assessors and the universities being assessed by QS World Criteria and weighting are to determine the important university priorities The data are based on the interview survey process, the more data to facilitate the comparison results between universities the more the results of assessment are fair Table 2 presents QS Rankings’ scoring structure of groups of assessment criteria

Table 2 Scoring structure of groups of assessment criteria of QS Rankings

Source: QS (2020a, 2020b) The most controversial part of the QS world rankings is the use of peer-reviewed surveys

This method uses the form of mailing, questionnaires which are sent to individuals and higher education institutions in order to survey their opinions on the ratings of famous universities in the field of typical activities, including scientific research activities In the

2011 rankings, QS world rankings used the responses of 33,744 people in more than 140

countries These are personal votes Respondents can nominate up to 30 universities but cannot vote individually

The published research citation index is one of the most widely used output factors for national and global university rankings The QS world rankings uses an index of research citations published from the Thomson database (at Thomson Reuters) between

2004 and 2007 In subsequent years, accordingly, the QS world rankings uses additional data from Scopus, and part of Elsevier, which are publishers of well-known and prestigious scientific journals in the world The total number of citations of research published over a five-year period is divided by the number of academics in a university to yield the score for this indicator, weighting 20% of university’s possible score in the rankings (citation per faculty) Explanation for how to calculate the citation coefficient of published articles in this way (most of other popular rankings only count the number of published articles with citations common to all scientific disciplines over a specified period of time) QS World Rankings believes that it will be more fair to calculate the score for articles published in the fields which have a higher citation rate and coefficient than those in the field of arts, humanities and social sciences (Binh and Khuong, 2015)

According to the Table 2, the scientific research related criteria include academic peer review and citations per faculty contribute to 60% of the total score

2.3 Quality of scientific research and the university ranking

As we see in the Table 1 and Table 2 the scientific research related criteria may contribute to over 60% of the total score of the university rankings proposed by ARWU and QS World In the ARWU ranking they include: number of scientists with high scientific citations belongs principal scientific majors (20%); number of articles published in indexed journals (20%); number of both natural and social science citations (20%) In the QS world ranking they include: Academic peer review (40%); citations per faculty (20%) Based on the above mentioned facts the study in this article aims to analyse the current state of scientific research in Vietnamese universities and propose solutions to improve its quality of boost their positions in international rankings

3 Research design

This study investigates the issues related to the current state of quality of scientific research and publication; their impacts on world rankings of universities in Vietnam This

is important for both the academia and business world because universities are traditionally regarded both as places for new knowledge creation – dissemination and bridges between learning environment and labour market Observing ongoing trend in the world higher education’s competition and in accordance with the nature of higher education itself, creating new knowledge through scientific research and publication seems to be the most essential assessment criteria in the university rankings (Clarke, 2007; Salamzadeh et al, 2014) To retain and expand the scope of methodology used in economic and entrepreneurship research, this study applied multi perspective comparative method to analyse ten best public and private universities in Vietnam in the national rankings (Dana and Dana, 2005) Data on their scientific publication and research quality are collected, compiled and compared In order to guarantee quality and

rigour during the research process we put forward very strict criteria for research objects’

selection (Groenland and Dana, 2019):

• same amount of objects for both researched groups (public and private universities)

• similar size and process of development for objects in each of research groups

• absolutely the very top (less than 5%of total) private and top public universities are objects of our research interest and selection;

3.1 Objects and subjects of research

The article was based on the research conducted at ten universities in Vietnam that achieved the highest position in the latest national universities ranking Among the top 10 universities in the ranking five of them are public and five of them are private In terms of subject of research, we focus on whether and how quality of scientific research in these universities assures them a right place in the national and world ranking tables considering also their origin as being public or private institutions

3.2 Spatial and temporal scope of research

The research was carried out in the period of 2018–2020 (when the first ever national universities ranking was made) within the Vietnam’s territory including Northern, Central and Southern part of the country In Vietnam, currently there are 237 functioning universities excluding colleges 172 out of them are public universities and 65 are private ones Among the five highest ranked public universities two come from the Northern Vietnam (Vietnam National University in Hanoi and Hanoi University of Science and Technology), two come from Southern Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology) and one comes from Central Vietnam (Da Nang University in Da Nang City) Among the five highest ranked private universities two come from the Northern Vietnam (Phenikaa University, FPT University), two come from Southern Vietnam (Nguyen Tat Thanh University, Ton Duc Thang University) and one comes from Central Vietnam (Duy Tan University in Da Nang City)

3.3 Research methodology

The research collected documents regarding national and international ranking (ARWU, THE and QS) of selected Vietnamese universities based in the information in the websites of the ranking institutions Discourse analysis was then applied through NVivo qualitative analysis program to verify the difference in terms of positions of selected universities in different ranking tables and their related scientific potential and achievements

In the second stage, the research conducted 30 minute interviews with principals and heads of scientific research department of the selected universities They were asked on the orientation of policy for scientific research to boost, current position of their institutions in the ranking tables both domestic and international, the perceived advantages and disadvantages of both private and public universities in scientific development, the role of research management to boost the position of a given university

in the university ranking

4 Research results presentation

4.1 University ranking and ranking criteria in Vietnam

Evaluation and ranking of universities is an ongoing trend of countries around the world

The main driver of this trend is the need to further improve the quality and transparency

of higher education institutions in the context of a competitive and rapidly changing world In Vietnam, although the Ministry of Education and Training has a policy of stratifying and ranking universities, there is no official comprehensive ranking of higher education institutions published yet Therefore, the first university ranking was born with the aim of encouraging universities to be transparent about their institution information as well as speeding up the innovation process to approach international standards The purpose of the first ever university national ranking in Vietnam is to propose a set of criteria to help compare Vietnamese higher education institutions The set of criteria is chosen so that it can be measured with publicly available data and independently verified

The principles applied when establishing this ranking are appropriate to the Vietnamese situation, quantitative, credible and objective, and encourage universities to move towards international standards For example, scientific articles in domestic journals are not included in the ranking criteria if these journals are not in the ISI/Scopus list Instead, this ranking used information about the number of articles published in high quality international scientific journals as a measure of the university’s scientific research capacity A number of Vietnamese journals are also included in these categories, and of course articles published in these journals are considered in the ranking In general, socio-economic universities are rated lower in the ranking than science and technology or multidisciplinary universities (Tien et al, 2020d) The main reason behind is that the presence of these universities in international scientific publications is still weak, and at the same time, it may be due to the larger education scale compared to the capacity of qualified teaching staff (measured in by the ratio of lecturers with PhD degrees to students) Those are the barriers and challenges for the reform efforts of these universities

in the coming time The measures to rank Vietnamese universities are put into the set of following criteria: 40% (scientific research), 40% (education and training) and 20%

(facilities and management) (DUYTAN, 2021) As we can see, the contribution of scientific research criteria (40%) to the total score in Vietnamese ranking is below these

in international ranking presented above (above 60%)

4.2 Quality of scientific research of universities in Vietnam

Universities selected to our research are placed very high in the above mentioned first ever ranking done in Vietnam Amongst them are five public universities and five private universities In terms of disciplines of research and education, we have eight multidisciplinary universities and two universities of science and technology As a matter

of fact, socio-economic universities are rated lower in the ranking than science and technology or multidisciplinary universities, no single socio-economic university is place quite high enough in the ranking to be select to our research (Tien et al., 2020d) The selected universities in our study are classified as follows and we will discuss the achievements and quality of scientific research of each of categories of university:

• Public universities: Vietnam National University in Hanoi; Hanoi University of Science and Technology; Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam National University; Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology; Da Nang University in Da Nang City

Public universities are very reputable and long standing universities in Vietnam

They have strong faculty research staff in terms of both quality and quantity with tradition of carrying out intensive, both basic and applied research, international publication, performing social service and public consulting in many disciplines of technology, natural sciences and social sciences

• Private universities: Phenikaa University; FPT University; Nguyen Tat Thanh University; Ton Duc Thang University; Duy Tan University in Da Nang City

Private universities are rising stars with quite a short history of development in Vietnamese higher education landscape Most of them, such as Phenikaa University, FPT University and Nguyen Tat Thanh University, are possessed, governed and controlled by largest corporations in Vietnam (Tien et al., 2020b) They carry out also multidisciplinary applied research, mostly for the needs of their corporations as holding companies These private universities are created by and as such they are invested heavily by their corporations to become important centre of research and development nationally So, we observe a significant and steady rise in quality of research and more importantly, research results application through

commercialisation and transferring to the market and business environment

• Multidisciplinary universities: Vietnam National University in Hanoi; Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam National University; Da Nang University in Da Nang City; Phenikaa University; FPT University; Nguyen Tat Thanh University, Ton Duc Thang University; Duy Tan University in Da Nang City

Most selected to our study universities are multidisciplinary (in which three out of eight are public and five out of eight are private), because of focusing on everything, they can be leaders at many fronts of scientific research and achieve dominant positions in the ranking tables They can take advantage of synergy effect of being at the crossroads of many scientific disciplines, being particularly strong in certain but not in all fields of science, and performing a variety of academic activities all together: teaching, researching, publication, social service and public consulting

• Science and technology universities: Hanoi University of Science and Technology;

Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology

There are not many universities, especially private universities that strive to focus only on the field of science and technology due to long term vision and investment horizon required So, almost all the technology universities are of public origin and have a long tradition and history of development Importantly they are subsidised funded and invested by state budget Their carried out researches are focused on many important fields of technology that lay a ground and are necessary for the national development in a long run, even the fields of technology that seem not very attractive in terms of return of investment for private entities