Hanoi (VNA) - The ASEAN Universityꦫ Network – Quality Assurance’s (AUN-QA) set of criteria for university quality assessment was officially launched by the Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNUH) on July 19.

The VNUH’s University of Science will be the first educational institution in the region to experimentally apply the system in January, 2017. By the end of this year, a total of 220 graduate and post-graduate programmes in eight Southeast Asian nations will be evaluated under the AUN-QA system through 98 assessments. Some 32 evaluations will be carried out for 61 Vietnamese high education programmes, including 18 from the VNUH. The VNUH has been a pioneer in the field of quality assessment for international standard training programmes. In 2009, the IT bachelor programme of the VNUH’s University of Engineering and Technology became the AUN’s 6 th graduate programme earning recognition under the quality assurance system. The AUN-QA network is a group of Chief Quality Officers (CQOs) appointed by the AUN’s member universities as the focal point for coordinating activities to realise the mission of harmonising educational standards and seeking a continuous improvement of academic quality of universities in ASEAN. Its activities are carried out by the CQOs in accordance to the Bangkok Accord adopted in 2000, which provides a series of guidelines to promote the development of a quality assurance system as instruments for maintaining, improving and enhancing teaching, research and the overall academic standards of AUN member universities. The evaluation is based on criteria like pedagogic attitude and teaching strategy, quality of lecturers and co-ordinators, students and assistants, infrastructure, facilities and programme design, human-resource development activities, and feedback from the relevant objectives and outcomes.-VNA