The former Ton Duc Thang University (Ton Duc Thang University: TDTU) is currently known as Ton Duc Thang Private University of Technology, established under the Prime Minister's Decision 787/ TTg-QĐ dated on September 24, 1997. The university was founded and is governed by the Ho Chi Minh City Labor Confederation through the university board of management chaired by the periodical Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City Labor Confederation.

The goal of establishing TDTU in the first phase was to implement the Program 17/TU and the Directive 13 of Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee on training, retraining, fostering and enhancing professional levels and skills for the city’s functional labor force. Along with the goals of developing human resources for the needs of industrialization and modernization; contributing to the training of talents and human resources; developing research activities to serve production systems and society in Ho Chi Minh City and the southern provinces.

With the rapid development in all aspects of life, in order for TDTU to have  legal entities being suitable to its real nature, (a public university with non-profit and absolutely without private elements), the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 18/2003/TTg-QĐ dated on January 28, 2003 to transform TDTU's legal entities and change its name to become Ton Duc Thang Semi-Public University directly under Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee. Thus, after five and a half years being a private university operating with the goal of training human resources and experts according to the model of an applied university of technology, TDTU became a multi-disciplinary university of applied sciences and had no private legal entity in accordance with  this decision.

With the fast growth, and in order to meet  new needs, on June 11, 2008, which means approximately five and a half years after the semi-public entity, the Prime Minister once again issued Decision No. 747/TTg-QĐ changing Ton Duc Thang Semi-public University into Ton Duc Thang University governed by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor. During this time, the University's extra goal is to directly serve the development of human resources among workers to contribute to the construction of the Vietnamese working class in the spirit of Resolution 20-NQ/TW dated on January 28, 2008 of the 6th meeting at the 10th Central Committee of the Communist Party.

Exactly 7 years later  on January 29, 2015 in Decision No. 158/QĐ-TTg, the Prime Minister approved the pilot scheme to renovate the operational mechanism of Ton Duc Thang University in the period of 2015-2017; The goal of Ton Duc Thang University is determined that: "Ton Duc Thang University actively mobilizes, and uses the resources of the University and society reasonably and efficiently (without using state budget capital) to develop Ton Duc Thang University into a quality research-oriented university in the region and the world as well as to ensure that participants from the policy beneficiaries and poor households have opportunities to access the higher education programs.”

Thus, in the past 22 years, TDTU's rapid development has required the adjustment of the school's objectives and legal entities many times. To this day, TDTU is a public university with a vision to become an excellent research university in the world’s TOP 200 universities; and with its medium-term goal that “in the next 20 years (since 2017), TDTU is responsible for becoming a research university in the TOP 60 Asian universities as well as in the TOP 500 best universities in the world”.

Martin Luther once said "When schools flourish, all flourishes". TDTU will be an elite research university in the world to best serve the country and people of Vietnam as well as the stable, sustainable and peaceful development of mankind.