Programme - USTH-PhD programs

An overview of the doctoral training program

The USTH-Doctoral School offers full-time doctoral training at USTH laboratories and/or at laboratories cooperating with USTH. The training period is 3 years (36 months) for Ph.D. students holding a Master’s diploma and 4 years (48 months) for Ph.D. students holding a Bachelor’s diploma. The training program consists of 180 ECTS, including general and thematic essays, common courses, doctoral courses, and a Ph.D. thesis. The annual Doctoral Day is a part of the training program. Ph.D. students are also encouraged to attend doctoral training courses organized by other institutions, relevant regular (master) course units during their training period, and to attend and present at scientific seminars and conferences.

Courses

The doctoral training program will offer common courses and doctoral/specialized courses. The common courses aim to provide Ph.D. students with a broadening list of transferable skills such as Communication skills, Research & Valorisation, Scientific Integrity, Career management, etc. These courses are offered by the Department of General Education or by any other academic department. Please check with the secretary of the Doctoral School for the schedule for each academic year.

The doctoral courses are designed by Academic Departments. You can check the list of those courses of each Academic Department in the Course Catalogue.

Essays

During the doctoral training program, Ph.D. students need to prepare essays. There are two styles of essay: general essay and thematic essay. The general essay is sort of a survey on the scientific research topic of your thesis. The thematics essay will be more specialed on various approaches to the Ph.D. research topic. These essays will be evaluated by a jury and usually presented at the annual Doctoral day.

Doctoral thesis

The most important part of the Ph.D. training program at the USTH-Doctoral School is your Ph.D. thesis.

During the training program, depending on the progress of the research project, supervisor(s) and Ph.D. students decide appropriate period(s) to conduct research at a USTH research laboratory, a USTH associated laboratory, a USTH consortium laboratory, and/or at a laboratory that has signed MOU with USTH provided that at least haft of total research period should be at USTH research laboratory and/or USTH associated laboratory in Vietnam.

Program structure