Eight Vietnamese universities have been named among Asia’s top 550 higher education institutions, according a recently released ranking by the British education consultant Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), VnExpress reported.

Vietnam’s eight universities named among Asia’s top list. Photo: VNE

The Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCM) came top among the classified Vietnamese institutions, claiming the position 143 on the QS Asia University Rankings 2020. VNU-HCM is a public university and one of the largest higher education institutions in Vietnam with eight member colleges and 25 affiliated units.

The Vietnam National University in Hanoi (VNU – Hanoi) came next at number 147, followed by Ton Duc Thang University (HCMC), the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Can Tho University, Duy Tan University (Da Nang city), Hue University and the University of Da Nang.

Compared to last year, VNU-HCM climbed one position, VNU-HN dropped 23 positions. Ton Duc Thang University made a jump when climbed up from 291-300 to 207. Hanoi University of Technology, Hue and Da Nang keep their last year's rankings. Duy Tan University is one of 68 new schools qualified for this year's QS Asia rankings, in the group of 451-500.

To measure excellence among Asian universities, QS uses several key indicators to compare institutions, including academic reputation (30%), employer prestige (20%), faculty/student ratio (15%), international research network, citations per paper and papers per faculty (10%), staff with a PhD degree (5%), proportion of international faculty and proportion of international students (2,5%), proportion of inbound exchange students and proportion of outbound exchange students (2,5%).

Top ten QS Asia 2020 still saw the presence of many top continental universities such as National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), Hong Kong University, Tsinghua University (China), among others.