Researchers at Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU) are the highest in number and the strongest among those working in different universities throughout Vietnam.
There are 1995 researchers out of the total 3426 staffs, including 41 professors, 254 associate professors, 687 doctors of science and doctors of philosophy, and 899 masters; especially, many of them are prestigious leaders in their fields not only domestically but also internationally in natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, foreign languages, technologies, economics, laws, education and so on. Doctors of Philosophy and Doctors of Science account for 36.9% of the whole staff, Professors and Associate Professors account for 15.9%, three times as much as the average of the country. In several departments, researchers with PhD degrees account for approximately 60% such as School of Laws (58.8%), University of Natural Sciences (55.8%), University of Technology (55.2%). In many departments, bachelors only account for 10%, and these are the resource for potential doctoral and master training level.
Many researchers at VNU have won high awards, including 13 Ho Chi Minh Awards, 21 National Awards and many prestigious international awards. One was a member of the group who got Nobel Prize in 2007, one achieved COSMOS prize in 2008.
VNU actively trains and attracts PhD researchers to work in this university; furthermore, it suggests suitable solutions and good conditions for over 300 associate professors and professors from other universities and hundreds of prestigious researchers from all over the world (some of whom got Nobel Prize and other prizes) to lecture and do research here.
To implement the 5-year development plan (2011 – 2015), VNU is deploying the project of developing its staff, establish and diversify modes of developing both science staff (lecturers and researchers) and management staff to meet the standards: virtuous, competent, knowledgeable and skillful. The targets of this project are: the number of PhDs is at least 50% (70% in the field of natural sciences, technologies and economics), the number of professors and associate professors is 25%, and the number of teachers who give lectures using English as the medium of instruction is 20%; leading scholars have increasing publications in foreign journals and citations.
In addition, VNU is developing mechanism and policies to raise the activeness, creativity, autonomy and accountability of each VNU constituent towards the training, development and management of their own staff.