The participants listened to specialized reports on the inspection of PAA at USSH's units by MA. Nguyen Van Thuy (Office for Inspection and Legal Affairs); the suggestions and recommendations from units for PAA presented by Assoc. Prof. Dr Bui Thanh Nam (Head of Office for Academic Affairs); and summaries of PAA by MA. Hoang Van Quynh (Deputy Head of Office for Academic Affairs).

Vice Rector Hoang Anh Tuan chairs the conference

Participants acknowledged the positive results of USSH's PAAs during 2018. With two examinations, 413 master's candidates and 50 doctoral candidates were admitted to the University. While PAAs in general faced difficulties, the University's results actively contributed to the development of Vietnam National University's PAAs as a whole. In particular, many training units showed their dynamism in approaching learners and extending the scope of applied master's programs to different provinces in Vietnam; for example the School of Journalism and Communication offered to train high-quality resources for areas in Southwest Vietnam.   

MA. Nguyen Van Thuy presents his report

Assoc. Prof. Dr Hoang Anh Tuan mentioned the short-term and long-term challenges of PAAs as the demand for postgraduate training became saturated, competition between institutions got fiercer, many basic majors became obsolete and new, inter-disciplinary ones emerged in response to the issues posed by an integrating society.

Assoc. Prof. Dr Bui Thanh Nam relays the ideas from training units

As such, the modernization, standardization and streamlining of PAAs have to be quickly and strongly boosted in the coming time. To this end, each unit has to actively and dynamically optimize and upgrade its activities to improve and innovate its training quality. The University considers 2019 the decisive year to standardize PAAs with concrete activities and tasks. The Office for Academic Affairs have to continue reforming procedures and reducing paperwork such as by allowing newly-admitted students to combine their papers into a single profile; integrating library and student cards; upgrading the PAA management software; continuing the "one-door" mechanism for treating master's and doctorate candidates; and using plagiarism detection tools to check theses and dissertations.

MA. Hoang Van Quynh presents admission reports

The Vice Rector also requested the training units to review their teaching processes and systems of procedural documents, and improve teaching quality and the evaluation of theses and dissertations according to their respective roles as defined by VNU.

Many opinions were given at the conference by representatives of different units such as Faculty of Philosophy, Faculty of Tourism, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Faculty of Anthropology and Office for Planning and Finance.

Assoc. Prof. Dr Nguyen Anh Tuan (Dean of Faculty of Philosophy) speaks at the conference