Students’ motivation as a performance aspect of modern librarianship tertiary programs in Vietnam has not yet been discussed in library and information science literature. With its three-fold theoretical rationale (that motivation and academic achievement are related, motivation changes through time, and motivation is regulated by numerous factors) formulated from Ryan and Deci’s Self-Determination Theory (1985), the study seeks to quantatively measure students’ motivation using a 6-item questionnaire delivered to 164 Library and Information majors (LIMs) at Can Tho University (CTU). Cronbach’s Alpha was calculated to check the questionnaire’s internal reliability, while frequencies and Pearson correlation coefficients revealed a non-relationship between LIMs’ motivation level and their grade point average, a reducing number of highly-motivated LIMs, and causal sources of low motivation. These three findings necessitate motivation-raising solutions, one being making motivation a strong predictor of academic achievement (which advocates the 1989’s view of Pintrich on motivation research and that of Deci and Ryan’s 1985); and another: building motivation by satisfying students’ needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy (which encompasses the main postulate of Deci and Ryan’s 1985-conceived Self-Determination Theory). The findings and the solutions can be a source of reference for other higher educational institutions that offer library-information programs.