Accordingly, for the first time, Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU) and 2 other Vietnamese higher education institutions have been ranked by THE magazine together with nearly 1,400 leading universities worldwide. In these rankings, VNU and Hanoi University of Science and Technology were featured in the world’s top 801-1000; followed by Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh in the top 1000+.

By score, VNU and Hanoi University of Science and Technology were given an overall score of 22.2-28.2. By performance, VNU leads the group of the three Vietnamese higher education institutions in the rankings for Teaching, Research and International outlook; VNU Ho Chi Minh City ranks first by Industry income; and Hanoi University of Science and Technology leads the group by Citations.

This year, the THE World University Rankings ranked 1,395 higher education institutions from 92 countries out of a total of 1,820 participating higher education institutions in the rankings. To date, the THE World University Rankings 2020 is the largest rankings ever.

The THE World University Rankings are based on the following five groups of indicator:

1) Teaching (the learning environment) weighs 30%, including reputation survey (15%); staff-to-student ratio (4.5%); doctorate-to-bachelor’s ratio (2.25%), doctorates-awarded-to-academic-staff ratio (6%); and institutional income (2.25%). Institutional income is calculated against purchasing-power parity reflecting the level of investment in infrastructure and equipment for an institution’s teaching and learning activities.

2) Research (volume, income and reputation) weighs 30%, including reputation survey (18%); research income (6%); and research productivity (6%).

3) Citations (research influence) weighs 30%. The data include 23,400 academic journals indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus database between 2014 and 2018. This year, 77.4 million citations to 12.8 million published works were examined. The number of citations to these publications made from 2014 to 2019 was also calculated.

4) International outlook (staff, students, research) weighs 7.5%, including proportion of international staff (2.5%); proportion of international students (2.5%); and international collaboration (2.5%), based on the proportion of a university’s total journal publications that have at least one international co-author.

5) Industry income (knowledge transfer) weighs 2.5%, calculated based on a university’s total income from technology and knowledge transfer to the business.