On the morning of January 12, 2025, Minister Nguyen Kim Son of the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) delivered a speech at the “Ceremony Announcing the Prime Minister’s Decision to Convert National Economics University (NEU) to the University Model.” The NEU web portal presents the full text of his speech.

Nguyen Kim Son, Minister of Education and Training, delivers his speech

Distinguished Dao Hong Lan, Member of the Party Central Committee and Minister of Health,

Distinguished Prof. Dr. Ta Ngoc Tan, Former Member of the Party Central Committee, Former Director of the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics, and Standing Vice Chairman of the Central Theoretical Council,

Distinguished guests and representatives of central and local agencies, commissions, ministries, and sectors,

Distinguished educators serving in the University’s leadership and former University leaders,

Dear officials, staff, students, and former learners of the University,

Ladies and gentlemen,

First, I would like to wish all educators, distinguished guests, learners, and students a happy New Year 2025. I would also like to express my joy and congratulate NEU on completing its transition from a standalone university to the university model. Congratulations to the educators in the leadership on assuming their new positions and leadership titles.

Today will go down in the University’s history as a significant milestone in its development and renewal, demonstrating its role in education and in serving society as a whole, the people, learners, and the country. From now on, the name Dai hoc Kinh te Quoc dan will replace Truong Dai hoc Kinh te Quoc dan. The only difference is the removal of the first word from the name, but this brings the word “Dai,” meaning “great,” to the forefront and helps the University strive for GREATNESS in every respect. Once again, I congratulate the University and all its educators, learners, and students.

Distinguished educators, ladies and gentlemen,

NEU is one of Vietnam’s leading higher education institutions specializing in research and education in economics, management, and business administration. As a national key institution, NEU receives priority investment from the Government and the education sector to develop into a center for high-quality education and research, playing an important role in the higher education system. NEU has achieved many important results, with the scale and quality of its education among the best in economics-related disciplines in Vietnam. With 88 undergraduate academic programs and 70 postgraduate disciplines, the University educates more than 40,000 students and learners annually. It provides high-quality human resources, including experts, managers, and scientists, to support socioeconomic development at both central and local levels, while also meeting the needs of the domestic and foreign business communities. It is also a leading national center for scientific research, undertaking numerous research projects at the state, ministerial, and institutional levels. Each year, the University organizes many reputable scientific conferences, including numerous international conferences highly regarded for their quality. In addition, NEU is a major research center that contributes to developing economic policies, improving management models, and promoting high-quality scientific and technological development for the country. With its reputation and standing, NEU has become a trusted partner for extensive domestic and international cooperation in education, scientific research, and practical application. The University also plays a pioneering role in promoting international integration in education, helping to raise Vietnam’s standing on the global education map.

Over nearly 70 years of development, NEU has steadily affirmed its standing and reputation as a leading center for research and education in economics, management, and business administration in Vietnam. On behalf of the MOET leadership, I acknowledge and highly appreciate the University’s achievements, and once again congratulate NEU, its leadership, and all its officials, employees, lecturers, learners, and students.

Distinguished educators, ladies and gentlemen,

What distinguishes the university model from a standalone university? The key issue is not size. A standalone university can also grow to a very large scale and achieve high-quality, world-class research and educational outcomes. What matters about the university model is that it is a large entity whose internal structure requires advanced capabilities and standards of university governance, geared toward development and reflecting an aspiration to develop and grow stronger. The university model enables autonomy and dynamism to flourish. Autonomy can extend to the smallest units, specialist groups, and individual scientists. If the organizational model is not designed to unleash the educational institution’s creative potential from within, the transition will bring little value. The new organizational and internal governance model chosen by the University creates greater possibilities, enabling it to unlock its internal potential, foster intellectual freedom at a deeper level, and make university autonomy more effective.

The university model is an internal governance model geared toward multidisciplinary development. Therefore, in its development direction for the coming period, NEU needs to work toward a well-balanced multidisciplinary structure that continues to capitalize on its advantages, strengths, and traditional capabilities. It needs to remain firmly grounded in its traditional strengths, areas of expertise, and distinctive characteristics, expanding into related disciplines that support one another as a system. It should pursue multidisciplinary development in the most appropriate way while preserving its identity and reputation. Being multidisciplinary does not mean doing everything others do. The University should not stray from its core goals and mission. Its identity and brand need to be sustained and strengthened under the new organizational model.

To have confidence in and assess an educational institution’s prospects and future development, we can look at its past, its record of achievements, and its current scale, quality, and reputation. Most importantly, however, both the pace and quality of its future development depend heavily on the development vision and aspirations of people today. NEU has aspired to, chosen, and transitioned to a new development model—the university model—to undergo a transformation, changing both its internal substance and external form, with a determination to innovate and develop. This represents a new aspiration and a new vision. It gives us confidence and optimism about NEU’s future development. This is a major, important, and highly meaningful step, and I congratulate the University.

Distinguished delegates, educators, learners, and students,

Our country is working with great urgency, initiative, and determination to develop cutting-edge technological and engineering fields and new technologies, hoping to keep pace with advanced countries. However, if technology and production advance while management, business, and economic policymaking—from the macro to the micro level—remain insufficiently advanced and fail to keep pace with the world, then efforts in technology and engineering will not deliver effective development for the country, and economic risks may even increase. It is like an unskilled person using an overly sharp tool.

Our mission in this new age, this new era, will certainly differ from what we have traditionally done. For other universities, scientific outputs include inventions, scientific and technological products transferred for use, and scholarly publications with a strong reputation and an impact on humanity. For NEU, particularly important outputs are policy advice, policy solutions, models, and methods for managing the components of the economy, localities, and enterprises at the national level. Our University has an advantage in learning from the experiences of the world’s leading countries in economics, management, finance, business, enterprise development, and other fields. Even before considering new inventions, thoroughly learning from other countries and creatively applying that knowledge to Vietnam’s development already provides ample scope for us to demonstrate our capabilities, establish our standing, and develop. We must learn from the world while applying that knowledge to Vietnam’s realities, keeping in mind the many distinctive features of Vietnam’s socialist-oriented market economy. How the psychology, culture, traditions, customs, and other characteristics of Vietnamese people affect management and economic development are issues that require attention. We need to fully harness the strengths of Vietnamese cultural characteristics to create new competitive advantages.

Following the Meiji Restoration, Japan experienced strong economic and commercial development. After a period of economic and business development, the merchant class grew considerably. Japanese thinkers recognized the need to cultivate an ethical, moral, and cultural ethos among Japanese entrepreneurs and merchants. They drew on the bushido tradition, Confucian thought, and Zen teachings to create a new merchant ethic that emphasized personal moral cultivation, trustworthiness, discipline, and social responsibility as core values. In this way, Japan established a national brand and distinctive qualities for its merchants in both the modern and contemporary periods. China has developed a market economy according to its own model, and the strong growth of its market economy over the past several decades has also confronted its thinkers and scholars with the major task of creating a new entrepreneurial culture and ethic grounded in traditional culture, with particular attention to building on that heritage.

The development of our socialist-oriented market economy in recent years has brought major economic and social advances. In practice, an increasingly large community of entrepreneurs has gradually emerged. As the economy develops, the ranks of entrepreneurs continue to grow. Previously, ours was an agricultural country with a tradition of favoring agriculture and restricting commerce, in which the merchant class was very small and had little standing. The period of the market economy under French colonial rule saw the emergence of the first true entrepreneurial class, but it was relatively brief. During the period of the planned economy, there was no room for entrepreneurs to develop. Only since the introduction and development of the socialist-oriented market economy has the entrepreneurial community increasingly grown. Yet alongside entrepreneurs who conduct business with integrity, demonstrate social responsibility, and regularly engage in charitable work, there are still many who disregard morality, commit fraud, benefit themselves at others’ expense, engage in predatory practices, break their word, and commit commercial fraud. As long as markets exist and businesses pursue profit, such practices will persist, but those who lead society have a responsibility to find ways to curb these negative aspects and foster ethical entrepreneurs. Only in this way can enterprises develop sustainably and bring ever greater benefits to society. Alongside strengthening the comprehensiveness and rigor of law enforcement, thought and culture, as well as education and higher education institutions, also have a very important role to play.

We are developing a socialist culture and socialist citizens, but applying the qualities of the new socialist citizen to entrepreneurs is difficult. We need to build on our cultural traditions and propose a new ethos and cultural values for Vietnamese entrepreneurs. How can they pursue gains and profits while remaining patriotic and responsible to the nation and society; honor their word in business without benefiting themselves at others’ expense; uphold sound, enduring values and aspire to reach the world; and embrace the principle of “considering righteousness when seeing potential gain”—not pursuing gain by any means, but thinking of others, the environment, and sustainability, without opportunism, shortsightedness, complacency, or fragmented approaches; …

As the country’s economy develops, the goal of building strong national enterprises advances, more new enterprises are established, entrepreneurship receives greater encouragement, and the entrepreneurial community grows in number, strength, and social role and influence, entrepreneurial culture and ethics become increasingly significant issues. To shoulder this responsibility and help address this challenge, higher education institutions need to provide ethics education for future entrepreneurs while they are still studying. If not NEU, which higher education institution will proactively address this increasingly significant issue? If not here, then where? If not the educators sitting here, then who? Professors of economics need to take on this responsibility. Doing so will add an intellectual dimension to the development of genuinely high-quality human resources for the future. This also means developing National Economics University to live up to its national stature, with “national” encompassing both the people and the nation.

Distinguished educators and guests,

One of the University’s immediate tasks is to review and refine its Development Strategy on the basis of the major guidelines, directions, and policies of the Party, the State, the Government, and the education sector. It must maintain and build on its traditional strengths in economics, management, and business administration, while making changes to align with current education and research trends in Vietnam, the region, and the world, and implement the Politburo’s Resolution 57 on the development of science, technology, and innovation in ways appropriate to the University. I also hope that, for the educators serving in the leadership, the change in the Vietnamese title of President from “Hieu truong” to “Giam doc” will be more than a change in name: it must bring a new vision and new governance thinking suited to an institution whose scale and nature have changed.

Regarding organizational matters, NEU needs to establish internal mechanisms and regulations to exercise its autonomy more effectively in the spirit of the Law on Higher Education, encouraging the dynamism and creativity of its constituent schools, units, and divisions throughout the system. Each school, unit, and internal organization needs an appropriate autonomy mechanism and distinct, non-overlapping functions and responsibilities, and must serve as an indispensable, integral component of a complete and strong university. A mechanism must be established that ensures autonomy for each unit while maintaining unity throughout the University. At the same time, organizational structuring and arrangements must aim to optimize and efficiently use shared resources to create added value and ensure sustainable development.

NEU also needs to build a smart, modern university governance system that combines university autonomy, decentralization, and delegation of authority with proactive, targeted investment and the fullest possible use of technology platforms and artificial intelligence.

High-quality scientific personnel always play a pivotal role in the University’s development and the building of its reputation. NEU therefore needs to focus on developing its scientists, experts, and young staff and creating the best conditions for their professional growth, while adopting appropriate policies to attract high-quality personnel to work at and contribute to the University’s development. In doing so, it needs to emphasize internationalization and attract accomplished experts, particularly those with a global reputation, while strengthening international cooperation in education and research. Global competition and the requirement to meet international standards also impose increasingly demanding expectations, requiring NEU to have a long-term development strategy that ensures a supply of human resources for the country’s development, while operating a complex governance system efficiently and sustainably and meeting international standards amid increasingly extensive integration.

For our part, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) will establish appropriate support and oversight mechanisms to create the best conditions for NEU’s development.

As NEU enters a new stage of development, I wish the University continued growth and even greater achievements, making important contributions to the development of higher education nationwide and taking the country into a new era of integration, stability, and sustainable development.

With the Lunar New Year of At Ty, the Year of the Snake, approaching, I wish all delegates, educators, learners, and students a new year of abundant health, continued inspiration, happiness, and success.

Thank you!

This is an automated translation. If you notice any errors, please contact the Department of Communications, National Economics University at phongtruyenthong@neu.edu.vn.