1. Introduction

    Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Nguyen Thanh Nam. I serve as the vice-chairman of FPT University. Today, I will talk about "globalization of education," "globalization of universities," and "how to educate young talents for the globalized world." Joining me today is my colleague, Mr. Khoi, the Chairman of FPT Japan.
    Today traditional universities face a lot of challenges. Everything had changed; we now see globalization and no borders. Even the expectation for students and the behavior of students changed. While everything is changing rapidly by IT, nobody knows what exactly will happen in five years from now. Universities are facing the challenge of how to educate global talents for this new world.

2. Establishment of FPT

    Starting with a little about my own background first, you can see here a picture of Moscow State University, 30 years ago. I went to Moscow State University as one of the students selected by the Vietnamese government. I studied mathematics and received my Ph.D. in mathematics in 1998. Then, I was faced with a decision. At that time, since Vietnam had been put under sanctions by the United States, it was a very poor country. the government of the country could not afford to fund research in the fields of mathematics and science. Accordingly, if you wished to go back to Vietnam, that meant you had to give up doing your scientific research in mathematics. It was a very difficult decision for me as an international student, but I finally decided to go back.
    After I went back to Vietnam, I started a personal computer company. This is FPT. Many of you may remember that about 50 years ago, computers were generally large machines and they required a lot of space for operation. Since 1980, when personal computers started coming on to the market, we believed that the future would belong to these small machines. At that time, there were only about 100 computers altogether in Vietnam, but it was a very exciting time for us.
    At that time, we didn't have any business experience in management, trading managemanet, finance, personnel affairs, and so on. We learned many thing from our business partners, Olivetti, IBM, CISCO, Microsoft, Sumitomo, Toshiba, Sony, etc. From our experience, we believe that learning in the real world is much more important than learning in the classroom.

3. Becoming One of the Largest IT Companies in Vietnam

    Last year, FPT became one of the largest information technology companies in Vietnam. In 2013, FPT's revenue was 1.36 billion US dollars and it employed 17,000 employees. Now its revenue has increased to 1.6 billion dollars with 22,000 employees. We now have offices in 19 countries worldwide.
    FPT is now providing services for the "smart world" (a world where everything had information processing functions). About 30 years ago, we believed that the future would belong to personal computers. However, we now believe that the future will belong to intelligent devices. Interlligent devices are generally called IoT(Internet of Things), but we understand if as smart devices (devices with information processing functions). I believe that everything will become smart (will have information processing functions) in the future.

4.  Establishment of FPT University

    During the developmemt of the FPT as a company, we were facing a problem - we weren't able to secure the people whom we were looking for.
    Universities in Vietnam are still doing the same thing as 100 years ago. There has been no change in university operations and professors' mindsets for about 100 years.
    The world is now becoming borderless. Universities need to change as technology changes. They need to teach their students to become globally-minded. This is not only a problem for Vietnam but also for other countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and Japan. Technology gets outdated very quickly, so teaching technology only is not effective. What universities need to teach their students is the "skills to adapt to and keep up with technology change."
    It was very difficult to convince universities. So we decided not to keep trying to convince the existing universities but to establish a new university by ourselves. The establishment of a university by the industry was a very important, landmark event. Many professors from universities may think that universities should keep a distance from the industry and continue to conduct independent academic research. However, we believe that the industry and university should work together in collaboration. 

5. Four Goals of FPT University

    FPT University has four goals. The first one is to teach our students to be globally minded. The second one is to teach them skills to communicate their ideas to other people. The third one is to create an environment fully responding to information technology so that everything will relate to technology. The last one is to train them to be able to work anywhere around the world after graduation from FPT University. I hope that FPT graduates will work not only in Vietnam but globally in the world. I believe that they are able to do so.   

6. Globalization at FPT University

    As we have visited many universities in the world, we’ve come to a conclusion that there is something that we have to work on to achieve the goals of FPT University.
    Firstly, we shouldn’t keep our students in one place. We need to have them move from one university to another. We call it “global mobility.” University faculty and staff also need to become globally minded. If a professor can’t see things globally, he/she can’t teach his/her students to be globally minded, so he/she needs to become globally minded first. To this end, universities need to establish their campuses in various places around the world.
    Secondly, students, the university, and companies need to join together to create everything, including curricula. We also have to qualify for international ranking. We need to know where we want to go and where we are in the world.
    To put these ideas into action, we first established FPT’s campuses in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. They are very small, but the size is not the point. What is important here is to establish a campus overseas, in itself. This will force the whole of the University, including faculty and staff, to work on university operations with a global perspective.         

7. QS University Rankings

    FPT University participates in the QS world university rankings. Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd. (QS) is a UK base education consulting firm. It ranks universities by using various criteria such as “Graduate Employability,” “Teaching Quality,” “Research Quality,” “University Infrastructure,” and “Internationalization.” In its evaluation system, the maximum score is five stars. In November 2012, FPT University received a three-star rating from QS and joined the ranks of the top 800 universities in the world.         

8. Training Programs

    Integration between the industry and universities is necessary. In FPT University’s training programs, students will learn basics of PC, go through on-the-job training, and then learn advanced engineering. Engineers from FPT Software participate in our training programs to mentor students based on their real-life experience such as techniques for programming. In response to technology changing from day to day, curricula always need to change. Accordingly, engineers from FPT Software also participate in revising FPT University’s curricula.         
    Considering examples such as the case of Edward Snowden in the United States, we teach our students ethics that IT industry workers must follow. Employees working at IT companies have enormous authority. They can access any data and information. They can easily cheat people if they want. It is very important for us to help students learn ethics and how to be responsible for handling data that they are allowed to access, as FPT is expanding its operations.