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.