From 10th to 11th August 2009, an international conference entitled “Building up prestige among higher education institutes: Practical lessons learned from global perspectives” organized by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) was taking place in Nha Trang (Khanh Hoa).
This was a large international conference on building up prestige among higher educational institutes with the attendance of over 40 international delegates from nations such as: America, Sweden, Australia, Thailand, England… and over 150 delegates from universities in Vietnam.
The delegates from Vietnam National University, Hanoi led by Prof. Dr. Mai Trong Nhuan - VNU President, Rectors of the VNU’s member universities as well as the Head of the International School attended the conference.
On behalf of the delegates, Assoc. Prof.Dr. Phung Xuan Nha - Rector of the University of Economics and Business - VNU delivered a speech entitled “Building up prestige among higher educational institutes: Practical lessons learned from global perspectives”. During the speech, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phung Xuan Nha generalized the theoretical issues in creating prestige in general and higher education reputation in particular, and he made use of practical situations about the reality of the VNU’s distinction to bring up many important issues related to strategy making for higher education prestige: Structure of the higher education prestige; Role of good reputation with respect to higher education; Prestige development Strategies and Criteria for evaluating higher education distinction…The speech by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phung Xuan Nha drew attention and discussion at the conference.
In agreement with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phung Xuan Nha, Prof. Dr. Mai Trong Nhuan and many delegates emphasized that today, good reputation played an important role in building and developing a unit or an organization. Therefore, distinction in higher education became an urgent matter, especially prestige development combining with confirmation and quality assurance as well as relationship and international cooperation. The delegates also paid attention to the methods of building up prestige in universities in ASEAN in general and in Vietnam in particular in order to set up well-known universities. Experiences and ideas contributed by the delegates from universities, international training centers at the conference would be used as references and lessons for improvement of good name development for Vietnamese higher education.