"Strategies for Developing Autonomous Universities"
Keynote Address by Permanenet Secretary for University Affairs (Prof. Voradej Chandarasorn, Ph.D.) delivered at UPAL Mini-Conference On Saturday, 23 March 2002, (Edited version) The address I am assigned to give this morning will be divided into four main parts as follows.
I hope after listening to my presentation you will have a better understanding on autonomous universities and support the acceleration of the transformation process. The conceptual framework of autonomous universities originated in 1964 to provide more administrative autonomy and flexibility in the management of Thai universities and for them to be able to manage their institutions more efficiently and to free them from archaic bureaucratic constraints existing in the Thai education system. This concept was first introduced when Suranaree University of Technology was founded in 1990. During Anand Panyarachun's administration and in March 1992 an attempt was made to pass laws for the deregulation of sixteen public universities. The parliament at that time deemed that new laws to govern autonomous universities were crucial and that more time was needed to launch the process and the measures were therefore postponed and the question of autonomous laws were shelved. Nevertheless, the Ministry of University Affairs has not abandoned this policy and kept pursuing the autonomous concept by incorporating it into the fifteen-year long-range planning for Thai higher education. The long-range plan calls for a more efficient administrative structure, procurement system, and resources mobilization together with principle of autonomous and flexible management and accountability. Sub sequently, the policy has been gradually implemented into a more concrete form by establishing three additional autonomous universities during 1992 to 1996 and the Ministry of University Affairs has delegated the authority for personnel administration to the university councils concerned. Now, I will proceed with my presentation on the second topic of the fundamental principles of autonomous universities. The rationale behind this concept is to advocate flexibility and administrative independence of each university particularly in its internal affairs and for the council of each university to be authorized to play greater roles in supervising its administration. The University Councils will be given the power to formulate rules and regulations to govern namely: academic affairs, personnel administration, and budget and asset management. I will elaborate on these three administrative elements further. The first element is academic freedom. Universities will be given as much autonomy as possible to be able to regulate their own affairs independently. However the universities will have to comply with the core policies of the Ministry of University Affairs on curriculum standards and quality assurance. External auditing will be enforced to ensure the high quality of university education. Moreover, with the passage of time the mission of universities will be changing dramatically making it necessary for them to develop a body of knowledge, to gather academic information and data to assist community development and to serve as centers for transferring and exchanging of knowledge and wisdom. In the matter of personnel administration, each university council will be provided with authority to frame procedures freely and equitably. These university councils will issue acceptable regulations and set criteria for personnel administration such as selection process, employment, appointment, evaluation, promotion, salary and compensation, benefits, complaint and appeal, disciplinary action and punishment. It is expected that university personnel will be able to change and comply with new expectations that focus on efficiency and outcome of their tasks and this changing role will have a tangible impact on academic excellence and benefit the community as a whole. The third element is autonomy in budgeting and asset management. Each university council will be able to make decision on its own financial and accounting system and has authority to manage its own properties and assets. The institutions will be entitled to mobilize, handle, maintain, generate and utilize their own incomes generating from various sources including setting up their own financial auditing system. Each university will be required to submit audited financial reports to government annually. Government will provide budget to the university in the form of a block grant which is an essential factor of autonomy. Each institution will need to have an effective mechanism to deal with such a grant and utilize the budget efficiently to the fullest extent and be prepared for accountability. It is believed that block grant budgeting will result in maximum benefits with regard to quality and standards. Although it is more than a decade now that the Ministry of university Affairs has struggled with the policy initiatives to promote autonomous universities, it is still a long way before the objectives can be achieved. I will now move my address to the third part about obstacles and problems arising from the policy of autonomous universities. Problems at newly established autonomous universities can be summarized as follows: personnel administration, budget management, and follow-up and monitoring. In spite of the fact that autonomous universities have a more flexible employment procedure and salary scales are much higher than that of ordinary public servants in order to attract qualified and efficient personnel into universities but personnel of autonomous universities are not yet familiar with hiring and assessment procedures. These personnel are required to improve their performance constantly to obtain extension of their contracts. Moreover, a transparent and impartial assessment system is needed to motivate and boost the morale of personnel. The assumption that higher salaries will be able to motivate personnel more effectively has yet to be proven. On the issue of budget management, university councils have been given authority to manage their own budgeting systems. Though block grant has been allocated for use at autonomous universities but approval process still require line item budgeting and auditing systems are not in place yet. Therefore it is considered that budget management at autonomous universities is inefficient and needs a more transparent budgeting system. In addition its expenditure has not yet apparently proved to reflect its policy. The government has granted autonomous status to universities in order to enable them to manage more efficiently and flexibly, however, there is no clear evidence of any monitoring mechanism from the government agency or the public to oversee its efficiency, cost-effectiveness and the quality of graduates. The next issue will be problems arising from public universities that are transformed into autonomous universities. Some problems will be similar and many will be unexpected. The most prominent problem is the dual-track personnel management system where personnel can choose to remain under the Thai bureaucratic system or to join contract-basis system with better remuneration. Autonomous universities such as King Mongkut University of Technology Thonburi followed this model. Under the dual-track system, executives have double tasks to do since personnel administration and remuneration systems for the two categories are different. People who choose to remain under the bureaucratic system are not assured of transparency in assessment process of the new system and prefer to remain in the old system. In order to solve this dilemma the Ministry of University Affairs discourages any public university transforming into autonomous university to avoid such model. If unavoidable, it is suggested that the transforming university should limit timeframe from 3 to 5 years for personnel to accept to come under the new system. After transforming to autonomous universities, the accounting system has already changed but the budgeting system remains unchanged. There is no clear evidence yet of differences in budgeting system between autonomous universities and conventional universities. Moreover there is no follow-up and monitoring mechanisms for autonomous universities. There is no distinctive body or agency to monitor performance of existing autonomous universities. Consequently, conventional mechanisms and procedures are applied to autonomous universities. Now I have come to the final part of my presentation that is strategies in dealing with autonomous universities. Roles of the government and universities will be discussed further. What are expected from roles of the government? It is recommended that state budgeting system should be changed and result-based budgeting has been suggested for autonomous universities. It is also recommended that funding support should be based on number of students rather than providing directly to pay for recurrent expenditure of universities. Reasons behind such recommendations are the increasing cost of higher education provision and the view that students should shoulder a greater burden for their education. However, students should not be made to bear the whole burden and government should help support such cost partially as a social investment. The government agency is also obliged to monitor and to take follow-up action on performance of autonomous universities in terms of its quality, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, quality of graduates and their employability, and satisfaction of both students and employers. Measures to control and ensure quality at autonomous universities should be in place in order to facilitate internal and external auditing. The universities are also required to be accountable to the public and be responsive to needs of users of university products. For the roles of universities, in order to be more successful in transforming administrative structure into an autonomous university, we have to build understanding and trust among communities in a university. It is a difficult task for university executives to build rust and confidence and to show willingness and leadership to win hearts of university people. Public relations, clarifications, hearings, exchange of in-formation and solution of problems and transparency among university communities might be able to facilitate the transformation process. Public universities should gradually try to look for a new system of personnel administration that is naturally different from the bureaucratic system. The new personnel administrative system should be based on merit system and have transparent employment and assessment system. Initially university should adopt dual-rack system by building confidence in the new system that provides better benefit and security to attract more employees to quit the old track and join the new system in a short period of time. Another substantial role of the universities is to build up assurances on efficiency and quality to the public. Autonomous universities should develop mechanism for quality control starting from organizing a suitable body with appropriate duties. The tasks include effective planning, competent selection process for capable leaders, recruiting good students, reliable supervision of lecturer's assignment, overseeing teaching and learning efficiently, dependable assessment and evaluation process, and effective supervision and monitoring mechanisms. In addition students and stakeholders should have opportunities to play roles in the supervision and assessment of the university. In conclusion, autonomous status provides universities with more flexibility in managing their own affairs with suitable administrative models in order to improve mission and efficiency. The concept is designed to sidestep bureaucracy and free the institutions from their constraints. It will also allow the universities to be self-governing under the principles of efficiency, explicitness, transparency and accountability to the public because transparent administration will bring about faith in equity and willingness to be monitored and to ensure more thoughtful implementation. In the transformation process universities are recommended to comply with uniformity of autonomy, however, administrative diversity and styles are encouraged. Each university is encouraged to seek the best suitable style of management to go along perfectly with the foundation and strength of each university structure. I would like to urge our universities to share this next to impossible mission in turning into autonomous status and please be reminded of high public expectations placed in us. Finally, I would like to urge all of you to join me in mobilizing, utilizing, and sharing of our limited resources and to prosper together in the years ahead. |
V.P. Academic Affairs Dr. Bancha Saenghiran with keynote speake Prof.Dr. Voradej Chandarasorn, Prof. Dr. Parkay and colleagues from Washington state University in a photo session at Bang Na campus.
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V.P. Academic Affairs Dr. Bancha Saenghiran addressing delegates attending the "University Partners for Academic Leadership" program organised by the Washington State University at Bang Na campus.
Prof.Dr. Forrest Parkay from Washing State University giving a speech to delegates from Thai universities during UPAL Mini-Conference on March 23, 2002
M.Ed students who organised the UPAL Mini-Conference in a commemorative photo with delegates attending the meeting on "Strategies for Developing Autonomous Universities".
M.Ed. student organisers acting as masters of ceremony and announcing the programs to delegates attending UPAL Mini-Conference at Bang Na campus.