Attending the meeting, on VNU’s side, were Prof. Dr. Nguyen Huu Duc – former VNU Vice President, leader of VNU UPM Research group; Mr. Nghiem Xuan Huy – Director of VNU Institute for Education Quality Assurance; and Mr. Le Tuan Anh - Deputy Head of VNU Cooperation and Development Department.

The AUN’s 2020-2021 activities summary report was presented and approved at this AUN Rectors’ Meeting. The participants discussed and shared experiences as well as proposed future cooperation orientations of the AUN universities in higher education within and beyond the ASEAN region; proposed to re-appoint the AUN Executive Director, among others.

The participants also spent time discussing drawbacks and difficulties of higher education institutions in the context of the complicated development of the Covid-19 epidemic. Solutions to response to the new situation were also presented at the meeting. VNU representative proposed a comprehensive strategy on digital transformation, with priority given to the development of information and communication technology infrastructure.

VNU UPM Research group representative introduced the building of “University Performance Metrics” (UPM), a product implemented by the research group with support from the Ministry of Education and Training National Education Science Program. The UPM uses a comparison and star rating system, whereby universities with similar achievements are placed in the same group and are given from 1-5 stars. On the basis of the traditional ranking core, UPM develops more criteria typical of the university in the era of digital transformation.

Dr. Choltis Dhirathiti - AUN Executive Director and AUN members strongly supported UPM because it had opened up a new approach to higher education quality comparison with 8 groups of criteria and 54 highly synthetic indicators. UPM can provide highly reliable information for comprehensive comparison and evaluation of universities. Such information is useful for universities not only to govern their quality and objectives, but also to decide on cooperation partners. That information is also very important for learners in choosing suitable higher education institutions, especially under the current constantly increasing student mobility and overseas study demand.

The 36^th AUN Board of Trustees was held online on July 16, 2021.