In the late 1980s and early 1990s many universities in our country have introduced "extended" training (allowing students to register freely without necessarily passing the exam through national entrance examination). However, from 1993 - 1994, the State has allowed universities and colleges to proactively propose recruitment quotas to exploit their training capacity to meet social demands. Existence in a school of both formal and extended form is clearly not necessary. Therefore, from this school year, the Ministry of Education and Training has decided to stop expanding the training system in universities. At the same time, the educational experience in the countries of the world shows that to meet the learning needs of society, to create opportunities for many classes of people to receive university education but still ensure quality of the output. It is possible to open a free enrollment form but focus on private universities called "Open University".

For these reasons, on November 3, 1993, the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 535/TTg to establish Hanoi Open University (HOU) with the functions and duties as follows:

- To be a university training institution and study open training, distance training and on-the-job training so as to meet the diversified demands of the society, thus contributing to increasing the scientific and technical capacity of scientific and technical personnel for country;

- Being a unit operating in the system of universities directly managed by the Ministry of Education and Training and entitled to all statutes of a public university.

Trường Đại học Xây dựng (National University of Civil Engineering) là một trong những trường đại học công lập đứng đầu về đào tạo nhóm ngành xây dựng tại miền Bắc Việt Nam.

Tiền thân là Khoa Xây dựng của Trường Đại học Bách khoa Hà Nội từ năm 1956. Đến năm 1966 tách ra thành trường riêng. Đến năm 2017, trường trở thành 1 trong 4 trường đại học đầu tiên của Việt Nam đạt chuẩn quốc tế trong đào tạo và nghiên cứu do Hội đồng cấp cao đánh giá nghiên cứu và giáo dục đại học (HCERES) công nhận.