University rankings and educational quality ; Classements d'universités et qualité de l'éducation ; Xếp hạng đại học và chất lượng giáo dục

International audience ; Since the end of the 1990s decade, universities ranking or league tables have become all the rage worldwide. Being considered as a key feature of the quality of the national higher education in many countries, these rankings have created a mixture of public enthusiasm, authorities’ expectancy, institutional unease and academic controversy. The Vietnamese authorities and higher education leaders are also influenced by this ranking tendency, especially in the face of globalisation in both economic and educational exchanges. They expect their higher education system to be able to compete with other countries by having top-ranked universities. Nevertheless, despite playing a useful role for different stakeholders in higher education, the university rankings are subject to a number of methodological problems and shortcomings as well as limited availability of data. Such a variety of ranking tendencies, their characteristics and academic debates on their weakness, meaning and challenge for the future of globalised education market have not been deeply or comprehensively studied in Vietnam. This paper aims to systematise, by analysing and synthesising the published case studies and research works all around the world, some main international university ranking types in relation with the quality assurance mission in higher education. Instead of focusing on top-ranking positions, Vietnamese universities’ leaders should use these rankings with caution and pay their attention to establish the basic conditions, via a long-term higher education strategy, for real educational quality, meaningful for students and their future professional and society activities.[Original publication in Vietnamese: Nguyễn Tấn Đại, & Vũ Thị Phương Anh. (2011). Xếp hạng đại học và chất lượng giáo dục. In: Trung tâm Khảo thí và Đánh giá Chất lượng Đào tạo (Ed.), Xếp hạng đại học, chất lượng giáo dục và hội nhập quốc tế (p. 105‑119). TP. HCM: Nhà xuất bản Đại học Quốc gia TP. HCM.] ; Trong những năm gần đây, xu hướng ...