The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has just posted a draft Circular regulating the conditions, order, procedures, and authority to recognize diplomas issued by foreign educational institutions for use in Vietnam on the Electronic Information Portal of the MOET to collect opinions until May 15, 2026.
The draft Circular is built to replace Circular No. 13/2021/TT-BGDĐT, Circular No. 07/2024/TT-BGDĐT and Circular No. 34/2017/TT-BLĐTBXH.
The draft includes 11 articles and 4 appendices, which are amended and completed in the direction of strengthening the autonomy of agencies and people with authority to recognize diplomas associated with the responsibility of verification and explanation; promoting digital transformation, using interconnected data, simplifying administrative procedures, and improving the quality of full online public services provided to applicants for diploma recognition.
Strengthening quality control of human resources trained abroad
The draft amends current regulations in a clearer direction, helping competent authorities to recognize degrees and degree holders to easily determine the legal regulations applied corresponding to the training method according to the type of degree proposed for recognition.
Accordingly, the draft stipulates general conditions and specific conditions for each training method such as: studying directly abroad; joint training abroad; joint training in Vietnam; online learning; direct combined online learning; distance learning; learning through radio and television. At the same time, it supplements requirements for doctoral degrees issued by foreign educational institutions to learners under the direct training method if they have to conduct field research in another country.
The amended and supplemented contents aim to strengthen the quality control of human resources going for training abroad, encourage lifelong learning, and create conditions for Vietnamese people to study and absorb knowledge from legal educational institutions in countries with developed education systems.
Diploma recognition procedures are handled entirely online
The draft amends current regulations on dossiers and procedures for recognition in the direction of simplifying administrative procedures, making the implementation order and results of handling dossiers for recognition of diplomas transparent.
Accordingly, the procedure for recognizing diplomas is completely processed online, people only have to enter data once. For information already available in the national database and industry database, competent authorities will exploit and use it to replace the components of the dossier and do not require submitting paper copies or electronic authentication of documents that already have data. The draft also does not require notarization for translation for English diplomas that have direct verification information.
The draft also specifically stipulates each case to be recognized, the level of recognition and each type of dossier processing result, including: Diploma recognition certificate according to qualification level in the Vietnam National Qualifications Framework; Diploma recognition certificate according to qualification level of the education system of the degree-granting country; Notice of dossier processing results for diploma recognition for diplomas that do not meet the conditions for recognition.
These types of documents have been modeled to ensure uniformity of administrative procedure dossiers, helping the receiving agency record complete necessary information, shorten procedure processing time and create convenience for people.
2 options for the authority to recognize diplomas
Regarding the authority to recognize degrees of higher education and vocational education, the draft proposes 2 options:
Option 1: Amending current regulations in the direction of decentralizing to the heads of public service providers regarding the recognition of diplomas.
Option 2: Maintain current regulations, according to which the head of the unit with the function of assisting the Minister of Education and Training in state management of diplomas and certificates has the authority to recognize diplomas of higher education and vocational education.
In which, option 1 is designed according to the principle that which agency performs the procedure for recognizing diplomas, that agency has the authority to recognize diplomas, sign and issue certificates of recognition of diplomas; state management agencies do not replace public service providers.
