2002 Annual Faculty Seminar Assumption University

MAY 27-28,2002
"Crises in Thai Higher Education"

Part I : Overview and Concepts
Date : May 27, 2002
Venue : BITEC Bang Na

8:00 - 08:45	Registration and Refreshments.
09:00 - 10:00	Opening speech Rev. Dr. Prathip Martin Komolmas, President, Assumption University.
10:05 - 11:00	Keynote Address : "Crises in Thai Higher Education" Professor Kasem Watanachai, M.D. Privy Councilor
11:15 - 12:00	"Expectations of Stakeholders on the Roles of Higher Education": A View from Public Higher Education Institutions. Professor Dr. Voradej Chandarasorn, Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of University Affairs
12:00 - 13:00 Lunch 13:00 - 13:40	"Educational Approach: Factors Contributing to NTU's Success" Dr. Cham Tao Soong, President, NTU - Nangyang Technological University, Singapore
13:40- 15:10	Panel discussion: Relevant Stakeholders' Views on the Paradigms of Thai Higher Educational Institutions: Moderator: A. Glen Vivian Chatelier - Chairperson, Department of Business English, Assumption University Panelists: Academia Sector: Dr. Chumpol Phornprapha - Chairman, SP International Group of Companies - Vice President, The National Economic and Social Advisory Council - Adviser to the Minister and Permanent-Secretary of the Ministry of Education and to the Minister of University Affairs Alumni Sector: Khun Janjaree Thanma - Managing Director, Unilever Best Foods, Thailand Employer Sector: Khun Lackana Leelayouthayotin - Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer Cerebos (Thailand) Ltd. Parent Sector: Khun Sunandha Tulayathan - Previous Managing Director, Oglivy and Mather
15:30 - 16:45	Presentation: "ABAC Educational Leadership" Rev. Dr. Visith Srivichairatana, Vice President for Special Affairs, Assumption University
16:45 - 17:00	Closing Speech Rev. Dr. Bancha Saenghiran, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Assumption University

Privy Councilor Prof.Kasem Watanachai giving his keynote address "Crises in Thai Higher Education" on May 27,2002. Rector Dr. P. Martin Komolmas giving the opening speech at the Annual Faculty Seminar held at Bitec. Prof. Kasem Watanachai accepting a token of appreciation from Rector Dr.P. Martin Komolmas.

No country will succeed without educating its people. This is the position of the World Bank. Education is the key to sustainable growth and to reduce poverty. We should place education at the core of global and national development agenda. In the old days the World Bank used to lend money for construction or physical development but now they have shifted to human development. Basic education is the foundation of life-long learning and it is the education before higher education. In the new constitution, article 43, stated that it’s the right of each Thai citizen to receive quality basic education for at least 12 years free of charge. And the Thai government has to implement it 5 years after the promulgation of the constitution. It means that on October 11 this year the government has to provide budget for free education for all. It means if this policy has been implemented, there will be a lot more high school graduates than before and there will be a lot more students waiting for higher education opportunity. There will be a lot of expansion of high school students. I think, Rev. Bro. Martin was very far-sighted when he opened the Bangna campus. The life-long learning has many programs for people. AU is no exception in looking ahead about policy and trends in Thai education.

We have been through at least 3 education reforms in Thailand.

The 1st one was when King RAMA V introduced reforms and it’s successful by all means in transforming a primitive system to a modem system.

The 2nd attempt was. 21 years ago, when we had the student revolution. But it failed because the Ministry thought that it’s Communist inspired and it was dropped.

The 3rd attempt at education reform, I think, will succeed in some respects in creating awareness of learning reform. It’s going to the grassroots now.

The 2nd minor success is that we have the new business curriculum. The basic education curriculum was implemented this year but the structure of administration is still based at the central government. There is the struggle between power and power sharing. I cannot guarantee that it will succeed. It depends on the present Prime Minister.

I just gave you some of the main issues of the education reform. We have National Education Act 1999 and the law said that within 3 years or Sept 28,2002 we have to reform by shifting responsibility from the ministry to the local education authority. We need system reform, teacher training reform, administrative and learning process reform.

The more concrete terms of Thai education reform means education for all, the legal right for all to receive education. In order to provide education for all the new law has extended the scope of education providers. Recently we allowed the private sector to provide education, to set up schools, colleges, and universities. The Bangkok metropolitan authority can now set up a university, unlike in the old days.

This law would like to get rid of the central authority of the ministry. We used to have 14 directors general at the ministry. All decisions had to come from these 14 officials who are like princes and princesses. We would like to transfer and delegate decision making powers to the local education authority and to the schools.

Each level of education will be guided by a policy board called the Local Education Authority. Schools in the present system will be run by the headmaster only. He will not be accountable to anyone at all because the final test is decided upon by each school-no national benchmark system. That’s why we will have a lot of quality gap among 42,000 Thai schools. And only a handful are recognized by the people as good schools. We have to change all that. When an international organization or system checks the quality of education of each country Thailand would come at the bottom. We have to change because our program is quite poorly administered and there is no accountability at all.

There will be accountability for school management. We have the law increasing compulsory education from 6 to 9 years. We had compulsory education for 6 years for a long time. Two years ago the national education council has issued the findings about the average education of the Thai workforce-34 million altogether. It’s only 7.4 years. Grade 7 and grade 8 not finished because the compulsory education stays fixed at 6 years. Now we want to increase it to 9 years.

We have extended the right of Thai nationals to receive basic education for 12 years. We need to overhaul the vocational and technical educational system. It’s long overdue. The new curriculum is being implemented in this academic year. We need to reform the learning process from teacher-centered to student-centred. We need to overhaul the system of teacher training starting from teacher production. We need to overhaul the curriculum for the teacher’s colleges. And we have to put the new quality system into effect. We have the national bureau of quality and standards which is already operating. These are the common catchwords today-education for all, basic education for all, and quality education for all, or higher education for all. Rev. Bro. Martin has said this morning that higher education is no longer the right of the elite. A comparison of global levels of higher education shows that Finland has the highest degree of success where 71% of the people finished bachelor degrees whereas only 18% of the Thais finished higher education. We have a long way to go.

The development agenda includes reducing poverty, promoting health, sharing technology, protecting the environment, advancing gender equality, extending democracy and improving government. If there is only one word you can remember from my talk this morning please let it be “quality education”. I think Thailand needs to build new awareness in education that is quality education. There is some phenomenon facing higher education globally and in every country. If you talk to the university presidents, everybody will say that they have received a reduced budget from the government and this is true for Thai universities. It’s because the Thai government has to shift part of the budget to fund basic education for all, which is required by the constitution. So the university has to find money from outside. There are still pressures from student expansion. In the next few years when lots of students will finish high school because of the free basic education there’ll be more pressure from students who would like to go to the university. There are two ways: the ministry administrator just sitting there will look at the situation and remain hopelessly silent (or) rethink and restructure your university in order to cope with the challenges.

Something that we learned is that higher education today is going to be very complex and your thought has to be interconnected. There are 2 big challenges to each university.

1. The creation and transmission of knowledge using ICT. It’s not a crisis for AU as we mentioned this morning. AU has very firm policy in using ICT in both administration of the university and the teaching and learning technology. So this is no problem at all.
2. The commodification of knowledge. I don’t know how rich AU is. Whether you need more money out of the students’ tuition fee in order to spend the extra money on the quality issue, or not? But I speak for other universities and colleges. I can speak of the government universities who receive less and less budget from the state. I think they have to consider seriously the so called “commodification of knowledge”. Knowledge as a commodity-knowledge that is usable-know-ledge that is saleable-knowledge that is purchasable. Such issues will come up and I think we should talk about it such as academic freedom, what is it? For whom? How far will it go? Knowledge production, ownership of knowledge, educational services, knowledge economy/ society is the issue that we have to talk about and issue of the student placement. I have talked about the inequalities in terms of economic opportunity, education opportunity. Is AU prepared to bridge those gaps? Are we going to provide educational opportunity for the poor, and how to do it? Staff exchange is one important factor. Diversity is very beautiful. If we can share our knowledge, opinions, feelings, and personal resources for the benefit of the organization, society, and nation, Staff exchange is something that we have to consider. How can we improve the quality, perspectives of our faculty? There is also the issue of consultancy in some professions. The knowledge of scholars inside the university will be very advantageous to the outside economy. Can we design a system and mechanism to provide professional consultancy? This is a question for the deans/ directors. And what about joint R&D in the private sector, establishment of technology centre, and support for entrepreneurship. These are questions that come up globally for higher education.

My model will be based on public universities but you can put private universities in here as well. Quality options for quality management. I think you have lots of friends and partners. You don’t have to do it alone. The private university, foreign university the branch campuses, university and industrial linkages. There are many possibilities for partnerships in which you can cooperate. This is the day of lesser support from the government-they are asking a lot of questions in terms of the cost conscious practices of the policy. They are looking inside and outside the university to reduce waste, to reduce the cyclical modes of operation, to avoid repetition, to consolidate, to look at the cross-functional workforce. Some cost conscious policy makers will be asking themselves. Are they subsidizing the rich? It’s about time to change. Can we do something about cost sharing? What about the cost recovery? I would like to finish my talk by giving you some thoughts about the declaration of higher education for 21st century. It’s from the world conference of UNESCO in 1998. It is the goal of higher education to contribute to the sustainable development and improvement of society as a whole. Each university has its own philosophy/ approach as mentioned by Rev. Bro. Martin. AU has something to gear up such as Business and IT programs. But again each university should have a broad picture of the state of the society to see if by your own resources, you can contribute to the development and improvement of the society as a whole.

There are 7 missions that a university should consider.

1. To produce highly qualified graduates who are able to meet the needs of all sectors of human activities.
2. To advance, create and disseminate knowledge through research. Research is the crux of higher education. Without research, we can not call ourselves a higher education institution. It’s not only the academic research but also management research or operation research as well. Research is not the prime duty for professors and scholars, but also it should be duty of individuals inside the organization. There are increasing trends among universities to teach bachelor degree students to do research. We don’t have to wait till master’s level to do the research. So it’s the big trend in US universities now that a portion of the bachelor degree students will be taught the research and problem solving skills.
3. To interpret and promote cultures in the context of cultural tourism and diversity. It is important when one looks at the global perspectives, even national perspectives. We have to put questions to the new generations that in addition to the education system of every country in this world, can we do something in order to promote peace and understanding among the younger generations. Parts of the answer are to interpret results and promote cultures in the context of cultural diversity.
4. To provide opportunity for higher learning throughout our life.
5. To contribute to the development and improvement of education at all levels. The world declaration says that if people in the university just confined themselves within the walls of the university, it’s not going to help the whole society grow at all. Why don’t people in the university get involved in the improvement of education? including basic education, vocational education, cultural education, sports education, etc.
6. To protect and enhance society by training young people in the values which form the basis of democratic citizenship. I think Thailand is a young democratic country. We have to learn and experience and mature ourselves in order to be a good democratic society. One way of doing that is training young people in the values, which form the basis of democratic citizenship. Please don’t leave this matter to the vice rector for student affairs only. Each professor is a scholar who has the duty in forming the basis of democratic citizenship.
7. To provide critical analysis and enhance perspectives in the discussion of strategic choices facing society. ABAC poll is one of the activities, the eyes of public, something that we can rely on. A university has to be neutral in order to be useful to the community politically, be critical and detached in presenting to the public.

I have carried you way back from the 1932 revolution. I presented to you the very simple Thai society in the past and to the present after the so-called “ democratization of Thailand”, including modernization of Thailand. We have gone through many successes and failures politically, economically, and morally. We still have hope. One way of achieving this hope is education reform by putting education as the core of our national development agenda, by putting education and the responsibility on all citizens and not only on the ministry of education.

Education is not something very far away. It is something that has to be integrated into the development of each one of us. AU has its own history in providing education to the Thai citizens for many years. And it’s going to play an important role in higher education in Thailand for the coming years. I do have to appreciate the contributions of overseas faculty as you have come to this country and you have shared your knowledge, you have shared your opinions, you have helped us to try to shape the new generation of Thai people. You are the example of what we call the globalization of education or the internationalization of education, if you don’t like the word globalization. I hope that this seminar will put you on a specific opportunity or occasion to discuss policy and practices for the future of AU, and for the future of higher education.

Thank you very much for your attention.