The project of training 20,000 PhDs by 2020 is one of Vietnam Government’s initiatives in the higher education reform, aiming to improve capacity for academic staffs working and teaching at local higher education institutions.

Over the past few years of implementation, the 2020 PhDs project has revealed some weak points, such as the imbalance between PhDs trained in different regions, in different subjects and low quality of a number of PhDs trained locally. Read the below article on Vietnamnet for full details.

The 2020 PhDs project has been realised by the Scholarship programme 911 managed by Vietnam International Education Development (VIED) – a body of the Ministry of Education and Training. Currently there are only 7,300 PhDs among a total of 51,000 academic staffs teaching at higher education level (14%). The Scholarship programme 911 aims to supply about 2,000 PhDs for the higher education system per year, which is still a very modest number as compared to the total of 400 colleges and universities nationwide.

According to the most recent report from VIED, there have been 170 foreign institutions signing agreements with VIED to send scholarship candidates to study overseas. With the objective of sending around 10,000 PhDs candidates to be trained overseas, this Programme 911 continues to be an opportunity for UK institutions to work in partnership with VIED. However, weak points as mentioned should be taken into account and flexible approaches to this programme are recommended. Besides signing agreement directly with VIED, UK institutions should consider strengthen the profile raising activities to promote their PhDs programmes towards academic staffs at universities, to improve their awareness about available UK options when they apply for Scholarship programme 911.

Should you have any enquiries about Scholarship Programme 911 or other scholarship schemes managed by other national and local authorities in Vietnam, please email Lien Ta, Assistant Director - Education Services at lien.ta@britishcouncil.org.vn.