Vietnam groups specialist university disciplines into broader fields

University portfolio planning in Vietnam faces a practical complication as specialist disciplines move into broader official categories from 2027.

The Ministry of Education and Training’s Circular 74/2026 revises the undergraduate discipline classification. Universities must review and reorganise degree offerings and curricula, while Appendix II identifies programmes being renamed, incorporated into broader disciplines or assigned new codes.

The immediate management task is to map each affected programme against the revised categories. That gives admissions teams a basis for describing courses consistently and finance teams a way to separate administrative conversion work from proposals requiring investment in teaching.

Among the changes, Thai, Khmer, Hmong and Cham language majors will sit within Languages of Vietnamese Ethnic Minorities. Folklore moves into Vietnamese Literature, while Literary Theory and Comparative Literature fall under Literature.

In the arts, Piano and Jazz Music will be incorporated into Western Instrumental Performance. Zoology, Entomology, Hydrobiology, Botany, Plant Physiology and Experimental Biology will be grouped under Biology.

These broader labels create a recruitment challenge for specialist offerings. A university selling depth in a particular subject needs that specialism to remain visible to applicants. Clear programme descriptions can preserve its identity within a broader official category; an indistinct prospectus risks weakening the case for choosing it.

Programme identity shapes the investment decision

For an institution concentrated in an affected discipline, protecting its specialist identity deserves a central place in implementation planning. For a broader university, the opportunity is to review how related offerings fit together, with academic value and student demand guiding any consolidation proposal.

The classification also preserves a separate business and management field, including business administration, marketing, finance, accounting and logistics. Computing and information technology programmes include Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Security and Artificial Intelligence.

That breadth makes a programme-by-programme assessment more useful than a single institutional restructuring budget. Admissions records and course descriptions may need attention without creating a case for replacing laboratories or changing staffing. Capital spending needs an academic purpose beyond compliance with a classification label.

A renamed programme is not necessarily an entirely new degree. The removal of a standalone discipline from the classification also does not automatically require universities to discontinue the corresponding academic programme immediately.

The investment decision therefore rests on the teaching model each university intends to retain. A wider category can accommodate specialist study; combining delivery is a separate management choice with consequences for course quality and recruitment. Savings from shared teaching need to justify any loss of specialisation.

The next decisions carrying financial weight concern programme approvals, accreditation and the treatment of enrolled students. Detailed transition rules will determine the scope for retaining existing provision and the work needed before revised offerings enter admissions. Those requirements will shape implementation budgets more directly than the new labels alone.