The country had seven universities in the list for 2018 and five in 2017.

The annual listing is compiled by Britain's QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a global higher education company.

On this year's list, Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh City climbed up one place from last year to 143rd on the annual ranking.

Its sister institution, Vietnam National University, Hanoi branch, fell 23 places to 147th this year while Ton Duc Thang University in HCMC made a big jump from the 291-300 group last year to 207th.

The Hanoi University of Science and Technology maintained last year’s ranking in the 261-270 group, while Can Tho University in the Mekong Delta dropped from the 351-400 group to the 401-450 group.

Hue University and Da Nang University in central Vietnam were placed in the 451-500 group. Duy Tan University, one of 68 new universities to make its debut in this year’s ranking, is also in this group.

The QS Asia 2020 rankings are based on 11 criteria: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, international research network, citations per paper and papers per faculty, staff with PhD degrees, proportion of international faculty and proportion of international students.

The National University of Singapore was ranked first in Asia, followed by the Nanyang Technological University, also in Singapore. They were followed by Hong Kong University and Tsinghua University of China.

Vietnamese universities have been performing well in global education rankings, too.

Last October, VNU Hanoi and VNU HCMC became the first ever from Vietnam to be listed in the Best Global Universities Rankings by the U.S. News & World Report.

A month earlier, the two prestigious universities entered the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, a British provider of higher education data.

Last August, Ton Duc Thang University in Ho Chi Minh City has become the first in Vietnam to be ranked in the top 1000 of the Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, an independent organization focusing on higher education.