Ho Chi Minh City Open University

Ho Chi Minh City Open University (HCMCOU) is a public higher education institution, offering multidisciplinary programs at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. This is one of two first Vietnamese universities that has allowed open enrollment into the Bachelor programmes since 1990. Also, HCMCOU is one of these two first two Vietnamese universities that provides distance education programs adding to the conventionally face-to-face programmes.

HCMCOU was founded on June 15th, 1990. HCMCOU offers education programmes from undergraduate to doctorate levels, associated with a variety of education modes including on campus education, online distance education and off-site distance education at provincial academic hubs. These modes of diverse education aim to meet various societal learning needs contributing to the development of the ongoing national human resources. Currently, HCMCOU offers 27 Bachelor programmes, 11 advanced Bachelor programmes, 12 Master programmes and 5 Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programmes. There are more than 21,000 full-time students, more than 13,000 part-time students, and 600 teaching staff.

HCMCOU has 12 faculties and schools in the fields of economics-management, technology, social sciences and humanities, and offices of supportive services. The university has two modes of training: full-time (mainstream system) and part-time (distance education, for both face-to-face and online. The university has awarded nearly 150,000 Bachelor’s, nearly 3,000 Master’s, and 19 Doctorate degrees.

HCMCOU has a flexible training system to serve the learning ecology including a reasonable organisation, practical and highly connected education programmes, learner-centred teaching methodology, a diversity of material resources; an evaluation system for developing quality education and an effective quality assurance system. Tenured lecturers are appropriately qualified. Libraries and laboratories are fully equipped and well-resourced, which meets the students’ diverse needs of learning, experiments, and research. Career orientation and counselling activities are conducted during the first year and throughout the programmes to prepare students for employment after graduation.

In 2017, HCMCOU was institutionally accredited by Center for Education Accreditation (CEA), Viet Nam National University in Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCM). Currently, HCMCOU has 8 programmes accredited by FIBAA, 4 by AUN-QA and 4 by CEA, University of Da Nang.

Locally, HCMCOU has been in close partnership with the central and local state departments such as Office of the Party Central Committee, People's Committee of Dong Thap, Binh Thuan, Long An and Tien Giang provinces to organise seminars on policies. HCMCOU has actively implemented socio-economic development research projects in the southern key economic zone, and Vietnam NAFOSTED projects. The research projects have been implemented across regions and showed evidently positive results contributing to the development of society and economy across these regions. HCMCOU has been also in academic cooperation with College of Medicine in HCMC, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Quy Nhon University, Thai Nguyen University, Ha Noi Law University, and Ha Noi University associated with joint conferences, curriculum design, and staff and student exchange.

Internationally, HCMCOU has been a member of various organisations mainly related to open education and quality assurance such as Asian Association of Open University (AAOU), International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE), ASEAN University Network-Quality Assurance (AUN-QA), the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization - Sufficient Economic Philosophy (SEAMEO-SEP), Quality Matter (QM). HCMCOU has also participated in the Erasmus projects and especially NGOs projects to promote the multilateral knowledge network, the social work practice, and social issue awareness.

The university has also developed joint programmes leading to Bachelor and Master degrees with international universities across countries such as Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium; Berlin School of Economics and Law, Fresenius University, Germany; University of Southern Queensland, Edith Cowan University, Flinders University, Australia; Rouen Normandy University, France. These are well-known in South Vietnam.