Cho was among the representatives from South Korea’s leading universities speaking a recent Vietnam-Korea education forum held as part of the Korea week in Hanoi, which ended Sunday.

The forum aimed to promote higher education cooperation between Vietnam and Korea by creating joint and exchange programs and increasing the number of students sent to the two countries.

Vietnamese students now account for 3 percent of all foreign students in South Korea, with about 1,441 in 2008.

Nguyen Ngoc Hung, deputy director of the International Cooperation Department at the Ministry of Education and Training, said Vietnam had a “very keen interest” in learning from South Korea’s successful educational programs, which had helped the country raise its GDP per capita from $100 in 1965 to $10,000 in 1995.

The figure was $20,000 by 2007.

South Korea also has one of the world’s highest university and college enrollment rates, which increased from 16 percent in 1980 to 83 percent in 2008.

Professor Mai Trong Nhuan, president of Vietnam National University-Hanoi, said Vietnam understood the need to transform universities into places that not just “spread” knowledge but also “created” it to benefit society.

The key for countries such as Vietnam and South Korea was not to copy the model of Western-style universities but by emphasizing the importance of globalization within the context of eastern culture, said Kyungchan Lee, director of the office of International Cooperation at Yongsan University.

For example, at Yongsan University, students must study Confucius and selected courses in its Asian studies program.

Provost Myungsoon Shin of Yonsei University, which was ranked No. 151 among the world’s top university in 2009 by The Times Higher Education, and boasts an annual research fund of about US$242 million, said the university had worked on its tenure and promotion systems, provided strong incentives to attract and keep the best teachers.

In 2005, the Vietnamese government approved a plan to upgrade its higher education sector through 2020. Part of the plan is to have at least one university in the top 200 by the year 2020.

Reported by Huong Le