Hanoi (VNA) -🔯 Ton Duc Thang University in Ho Chi Minh City has become the first in Vietnam to be included in the Academic Ranking of World Universities’ top 1,000.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) is the first global university ranking with multifarious indicators. It is published and copyrighted annually by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, an independent organisation focusing on higher education. Ton Duc Thang University is in 901-1000th place in the list. The top position was claimed by Harvard University of the US. Meanwhile, Stanford – another American university – was ranked second, and Cambridge University of the UK, the third. 

In Southeast Asia, Malaysia made up the most with five universities, followed by Thailand with four. The highest positions in the region (67^th and 73^rd) went to two universities of Singapore.

The ARWU is considered one of the world’s most prestigious university rankings, along with the QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education.

It comes up with the final list by analysing four factors - education quality (10 percent), faculty quality (40 percent), scientific research (40 percent), and average per capita academic productivity (10 percent).

For academic or research performance, it looks at alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, papers published in Nature and Science, papers indexed in major citation indices, and the per capita academic performance of an institution. Established as a private school in 1997 by the Ho Chi Minh City Federation of Labour, it became a public school in 2008 after being taken over by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour. Now the university has two campuses in the southern hub, and is home to 16 faculties, 60 research groups and 63 up-to-date undergraduate and graduate programmes with a focus on high quality research, training and internationalisation, and many interdisciplinary research opportunities. Although the main language of teaching at Ton Duc Thang University is Vietnamese, there are still many subjects taught entirely in English in various training programmes. The university aims to become a research base in 2037 and enter the list of the top 500 of the world's best universities.  It was the lone Vietnamese university in the  issued in April for achievements regarding the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Last December, the university was named by the UI GreenMetric World University Ranking among the  in the world. It was ranked 182nd and Tra Vinh University, another Vietnamese school in the southern province of the same name, 256th.

Established in 2010, GreenMetric is a prestigious ranking that assesses and measures sustainable development of universities worldwide.

ཧ The university met various criteria such as a green environment, setting and infrastructure; and emphasis on energy and climate change, waste management, water, transport and education (training capacity and scientific studies).

Last year, Ton Duc Thang University achieved a four-star rating from the UK’s QS Stars University Ratings. According to the definition of QS Stars, "a university that is rated 4 stars is a highly international institution, excellent teaching quality, strong research ability and excellent learning environment."  Accordingly, Ton Duc Thang University, along with many others worldwide like Western Sydney University (Australia), Bournemouth University (the UK), Thammasat University (Thailand) and University of South Florida, achieved the QS 4-star rating. In July 2018, the High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (HCERES) recognised the university as being compliant with French and European standards for universities. This accreditation has been granted for a five-year term, from July 2018 to July 2023./.