Universities in Vietnam are inclined to have an inefficient mix of input resources because of rigidities restricting the adoption of advanced teaching technology. There has been a deferral of the adoption of new teaching technologies to meet the rest of the world's higher education standards. Using an input‐orientated data envelopment analysis (DEA) method, technical, scale and mix efficiency indicators are estimated for 112 Vietnamese universities over the period 2011–2013 using the Färe–Primont index. The results indicate that the technical, scale and mix efficiency indicators are 0.784, 0.866 and 0.829, respectively. Using the fractional regression model, it is found that location, age, ownership and financial capacity have significant influences on the mix efficiency indicators of universities.