This study makes use of recent evidence from developing countries by which to evaluate the effectiveness of private higher education institutions (HEIs), comparing them with public HEIs. In this way, it contributes to the literature by providing the first evaluation of productivity and its components in Vietnamese HEIs. The study uses the Färe-Primont index together with a meta-frontier approach. The research results indicate that the higher education system in Vietnam is powerfully driven by the large-scale public sector coupled with the long-term plans of Vietnamese state HEIs. Public HEIs have also been a major contributor to domestic research, and although there has been an increase in total factor productivity (TFP) throughout the research period, the private sector's TFP was 30% higher than that of the public sector. Moreover, the higher technology gap rate (TGR) of private HEIs shows the potential for greater development in the future.