On December 19th of 2018, the ranking organization UI GreenMetric World University Rankings (UI GreenMetric) announced the results of ranking the world's top universities for the most sustainable development in 2018. In this year's ranking results, Ton Duc Thang University (TDTU) is ranked 182nd out of 719 universities.

GreenMetric UI is the first and only organization in the world to rank universities according to criteria of building and developing sustainable institutions, and being environmentally friendly and natural. This system ranks universities based on 06 criteria such as 1) landscape and modernity, environmentally friendly infrastructure; 2) clean energy policy and climate change response; 3) university waste management; 4) policy of using and reusing water resources; 5) intelligent transportation system; and 6) education capacity.

Leading the UI GreenMetric rankings for 2018 is Wageningen University (Netherlands), and followed by the world's oldest and prestigious universities such as University of Nottingham (England), University of Oxford (UK), University California Davis (USA), etc.

In 2016, GreenMetric UI ranked 516 universities worldwide and TDTU was ranked at 156. In 2017, there were an additional number of 103 major universities in the world participating in the ranking and TDTU university was ranked at 245 out of 619. By 2018, although additional 100 new universities entered the rankings, TDTU has still grown spectacularly to 182 out of 719 ranked universities.

TDTU retaining the position of the World’s TOP 200 Universities for sustainable development shows that the efforts in steering the university have been effective. TDTU has developed science and technology, improved the quality of education and environmental protection according to international standards; has been a worthy representative of the Vietnamese university system in this ranking. Being ranked in the TOP 200 demonstrates that Vietnamese universities are fully capable of sustainable development on the same level as the world's leading universities as long as the Party and State’s policy for university autonomy is implemented firmly and consistently from the top-down procedure  and with a well-managed and effective system in university operations.