After more than three decades of implementing the Doi Moi policy, Vietnam's higher education has achieved significant progress, in terms of policies of national reform and strategies of international cooperation. However, the role and place of tertiary education institutions in the world's education market are still unclear. Although a number of researchers have highlighted a range of impediments to its development, realistic solutions have not been devised to help Vietnam accelerate its progress in education. The main objectives of this paper are to review reform in government policies pertaining to renovation of the tertiary education sector, discuss the performance efficiency of higher education institutions using statistical analyses based on the findings from recent studies, and propose possible solutions for enhancing performance efficiency and transparent accountability of institutions in the process of the renovation of the sector.