Hue University

1. Strategic objectives

2. Overal aim

The overall aim of Hue University by 2015, and the orientation towards 2020, are to build Hue University into a key regional university, a centre for high quality multidisciplinary education, meeting national and regional standards in natural & social sciences, humanities, technology, medicine, pharmacy and agriculture-forestry-fishing; a strong research and technology transfer centre capable of having major research projects and programmes with participation of scientists from various disciplines, a centre for international cooperation and exchange to meet national industrialisation and modernisation requirements.

3. Objectives

Based on its general aim, Hue University is striving for the following objectives:

- Developing the undergraduate and postgraduate education system with an emphasis on modernisation, multidiscipline with diversification of training levels and systems to meet the demands for high quality human resource.
- Creating and promoting key research and technology transfer orientations to meet the university development, national industrialisation and modernisation needs.
- Fostering international cooperation to make the university a cooperation and exchange hub with major universities in the region and the world.
- Concentrating all resources to build technical facilities of the university with an emphasis on modernisation and standardisation so as to reach regional standards in a number of areas.

a. Education objectives

- Continuing to expand training to meet the requirements of economic and social development of the region and the whole country; diversify forms & modes of training delivery, enhancing the link between training and research acitivities;
- Striving to manage training quality to assure all training programs for different levels of quality accreditation standards and criteria;
- Promoting and enhancing the educational quality of some main, advanced programs affiliated with foreign universities to the level equal to that of high reputation universities within Vietnam and abroad for creating preconditions for improving quality of all other programs of Hue University;
- Promoting the flexibility of education programs, gradually transforming from the term-based system to the credit-based education system.

Specific objectives:

2007 - 2010 period:
- Strengthening and improving the educational quality of existent programs;
- Developing 10-15 main, advanced programs with international copperation;
- Opening 10 more undergraduate, 7 postgraduate and 5 doctoral programs;
- By 2010, introduce credit based system into all full time education programs in Hue University;
- Achieving the rate of more than 70% of graduates obtaining work adequate to their qualifications within six months after graduation.

2011 -2015 period: by 2015 Hue University is striving to:
- Achieving educational quality standards equivalent to that of key universities of Vietnam; achieve quality standards of 7-10 educational programs equivalent that of prestigious universities in South East Asia and the world;
- Increase the number of main, advanced programs with international cooperation up to 15, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels;
- To continue the expansion of new educational programs to meet the demands of society; to increase the number of existing undergraduate, master and doctoral programs to 100, 70 and 30 programs respectively, and student numbers to 100,000 of which there are 30,000 full time students by 2015; to extend the scope of postgraduate education;
- To achieve the rate of more than 75% of graduates obtaining work adequate to their qualifications within six months after graduation

2016 -2020 period:
To attain standards equivalent to that of prestigious South East Asian universities in terms of education quality of all main, advanced programs with cooperation by 2020;
- To be prepared to export education programs to countries in the region and attract foreign students to the university to study. To develop various forms of educational services;
- To maintain the number of students at 100,000, 35,000 of which are full time students; with the number of graduate students double compared with that in the 2011 – 2015 period.
- To achieve the rate of more than 80% of graduates obtaining work adequate to their qualifications within six months after graduation

b. Research development objectives

To step up research and technology transfer specific to the region; to link teaching with research and international cooperation, contributing to regional and national socio-economic development. By 2015, to strive for more research products by Hue university, and to establish a regional centre for applied research and technology transfer.
To actively expand international cooperation and contribute to staff capacity building, increasing financial revenues for facility development.
To concentrate, attract and effectively utilize all available resources for building modern physical facilities of the university, serving the needs of education and research, while achieving equivalence to those of advanced countries in the region in several fields.
To create and step up key research and technology transfers, serving the development needs of the university and national industrialization and modernization policies.
- To actively contribute to solving realised practical problems in local communities, the region and the country in terms of science and technology, production, environment, education, history and literature….
- To enhance the prestige of Hue University in the science and technology community of the country, region and international; to build several key areas of research capability that approach regional and international levels so as to implement State level research projects and participate in international research and technology projects.

Orientations for research and fields of priorities:

Research transfer and application of technology in:
Information technology in management of production and society supporting training and scientific research of Hue University ;
+ Bio-technology: apply in agriculture and medicine;
+ Issues in applied chemistry: study of environment contributing to production and environmental protection.

- Natural sciences:

+ Issues in modern mathematics and applied mathematics: global theory on generalized solutions of equation and nonlinear systems of equation first; degree stability of differential systems; semi-ring and semi-module structures and their uniformity, counter-uniformity; dimensional geometry and study of isoperimetric problems.
+ Issues in modern physics: solid physics of low dimensional systems, quantum information.

- Arts and humanities: Comprehensive research on historical, cultural and social issues in order to preserve and promote cultural traditional values and to develop an advanced and modern culture imbued with national identity. Detailed issues as follows:
+ Literature issues: local literature studies, studies on literature–culture relationship; issues in modern theory and criticism; issues of medieval and modern literature in Vietnam.
+ History issues: priority in comprehensive study of history, culture and society under the Nguyen dynasty; anti-war movements in South Vietnam; villages and land issues in Central Vietnam; ethnical origin and indigenous cultural issues of ethnic groups in Central and Central Highlands; relationships among contemporary and modern South East Asian countries.
+ Economic and tourism issues: study of resources in Central Vietnam’s key economic zone for socio-economic development in general and for tourism in particular; solutions to train and develop human resource for the industrialization and modernization of the Central and Central Highland areas.
- Education sciences:
+ Issues in undergraduate and graduate education: renovation of programs, contents, teaching methods and organisation; curriculum and textbook development; assessment & evaluation (undergraduate and graduate); application of information technology to teaching.
+ General education: scientific foundation and practice, solutions and measures to contribute to the improvement of general education; the development of programs, plans and implementation measures to improve educational quality in areas of difficult conditions in Central and Central Highland provinces; general education teaching methods and techniques; renovation of content, programs and methods for continuing development of secondary school teachers.
+ Issues in environment protection education: integration of environment education in teaching programs at higher and general education.

c. Development objectives, provision of social services

+To create several types of social and community services such as printing and publishing services; a consulting service on science and technology; a job consultation service; training and development service; and other types of services.
+ The above-mentioned forms of service are provided firstly for students of Hue University, and to meet the basic needs of socio-economic development in Central Vietnam provinces. These services will be gradually expanded beyond the region to be a bridge in the region and nationwide.
+ Financial revenues from services must become one of main income sources of the university, contributing 5 – 10% of all financial revenues.
+ To create several types of high quality service, especially in education and research, so as for Hue University to become a leading prestigious provider of services in Central Vietnam and a bridge connecting the region with other localities in the country.

4. Strategic solutions

4.1. Renovation and improvement of organisational structure and management

- To improve and renovate the organisational structure of the university to become more streamlined and effective. To clearly identify functions, tasks, responsibilities and power of member units within university.
- To build dynamic managers at all levels: Hue University, member colleges and units, support offices, faculties, departments. To be able to actively give advice to the leaders of colleges and the university in implementing assigned tasks of the respective units and the university as a whole, with the aim of improving quality in provision of service, education, research, and community services.
- To increase the self management and accountability of units.
- To assign concrete responsibilities to managers in charge of renovation programs in education and research.
- To create and strengthen newly established units so as to reinforce research activities and create close links between education and research, between university and society and real life practice.

4.2. Quality Assurance

- To reinforce and enhance capacity of Education Quality Assurance unit so that it becomes capable of advising the leaders in developing quality assurance standards and carrying out education quality evaluation at different levels. To build a consistent system of QA within Hue University;
- To establish a set of policies, programs and regulations for QA;
- To implement evaluation and accreditation procedure at all member units of Hue University so that to assure and improve training quality of all programs.

4.3. Institutional building and policy making

- To adhere closely to resolutions, laws, policies, guidelines of the Party, State, and MOET, so as to formulate concrete implementation guidelines that comply and also meet Hue university’s specific conditions.
- To build a system of strategic policies for priority areas of the university to build its own capacity, encouraging individual development in line with legitimate measures.
- To develop mechanisms and policies so as to increase the self control and responsibility of member units.

4.4. Finance and investment

- To expand legitimate financial revenue sources, especially from scientific research, technology development, international cooperation and services, so as to maintain the stable growth of tuition fee revenues.
- To actively keep balanced and find new investment sources.

4.5. Development of academic, research and managerial staff

- To standardize and make transparent staff planning, recruitment, training and development procedures.
- To increase the budget allocated to academic staff training and development in order to create key areas in education, scientific research and technology development.
- To standardize managerial staff planning and appointment procedures at all levels, while adopting a democratic and transparent approach.

4.6. Development of programs and learning resources

- To develop education programs on the basis of the MOET framework program, in accordance with a flexible and transferable credit system.
- To develop educational programs which are in nature scientific, practical and relevant to the labour market. To develop learning resources, especially electronic learning resources; to ensure adequate quantity of learning materials and textbooks for students; to open the university information portal to partner institutions in the world.

4.7. Renovation of training methods

- To change from a term-based system to a credit-based system, with more focus on active teaching methods consistent with the 3 criteria: increased proactive learning by students, provision of learning methods, and application of information and communication technology in teaching;
- To uniformly and universally introduce modern teaching and learning methods: creative thinking, case study, role play and simulation methods.
- To diversify forms of assessment and evaluation while ensuring accuracy and objectivity, which would approach the methods used by foreign universities and facilitate the exchange of learning by students.

4.8. Capacity building in facilities, information, libraries for education and research

- To strengthen facilities for education, research and management; to provide equipment for laboratories to strengthen practice, to build several key laboratories for learning and establish a science and technology service.
- To consolidate and enhance more learning resources in the learning resource centre and libraries of colleges, electronic libraries and open databases.
- To upgrade information infrastructure, intranet, and university website.
- To develop application software for management and education.

4.9. Reputation building and promotion

- To use educational quality as the basis for the university’s reputation promotion.
- To have measures to mobilise all staff and students to strive for the achievement of the overall objectives, and high results in activities so as to introduce and promote the university’s brand name.
- To use media to introduce and promote the university. To strengthen meetings and exchange programs for enrolment promotion at major secondary schools in the region.
- To build the information portal of Hue University; to improve the website of the university, strongly using information technology in management, education, research to support the promotion of Hue University image among external organisations and the public.

4.10. Close link with community and partners

- To maintain links with traditional partners. To keep stable and expand existing market on the basis of mutual respect and benefit.
- To develop close relations with the local community so as to gain their comprehensive support.
- To build close relations with employers, major enterprises and companies that provide practice opportunities to students.

4.11. International cooperation

- To develop an international cooperation strategy, focused on education and research quality improvement.
- To actively extend international cooperation, first of all with countries in the ASEAN region; and to step by step expand international cooperation with developed countries in Asia and the world.
- To collaborate in education with foreign institutions.
- To carry out international cooperation so as to contribute to staff training. To expand joint education programs with foreign partners so as to significantly increase financial revenues for the university.