Where is Thailand's higher-education heading?
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Loading... - Chiaki Makino
- 10 Aug 2022
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When people think of Thai education, Thais and foreigners alike would bemoan, shaking their heads. “Rote learning” they’d say.
But do they understand why it’s the way it is?
Education was originally for the Thai traditional elites.
In a broad historical view, public education was a recent invention in Thailand in the early 1900s – imported from the West. Indeed, Chulalongkorn university – the first and the oldest learning institution in Thailand – was founded to train royal pages and civil servants in 1899. Only in 1917 did it become a national university, opening itself to the non-civil class and the middle class.
(When the Europeans were digging trenches and slaughtering one another, Thai commoners had just gotten their first taste of higher-learning education.)
Fast forward to today, with a proliferation of state and private universities in Thailand, I would argue that university-level education, to a lesser degree, remains an elitist activity. Remember that up to ¼ of Thai workers are farmers with no education. Their sons and daughters would finish high school if they are lucky. Most just hit the job market, selling food and labor after finishing primary school.
For many Thai families then (and increasingly American working-class families) a 4-year university degree is a luxury.
Viewed from this lens, higher education in Thailand is a “signaling device” of their social status rather than a place for real learning. An exercise in branding over real brain power training.
Now, let’s delve into the rabbit hole inside Chulalongkorn University.
I confess I was once enrolled in their 1-year Master’s program many years ago.
I quit after about 2 months.
I felt like the whole thing was a “diploma assembly-line” where curiosity was not the priority. But meeting deadlines and passing exams were. The lecturers there, most of whom had degrees from the West, were merely going through the motion of teaching. Crucially, it wasn’t the lecturers’ problem if the students found the material difficult. This was ‘outsourced’ to small study-groups after class where students get together.
The student’s profile: While some of them wanted real education, my observation is that most of them just wanted a Master’s degree to display on their chest because they have money and time; or to get a promotion in their company. Or God-forbid – to find a wife or husband.
Moreover, as part of the program I was in, lunch boxes were provided to us, the cost of which came from our tuition fees. It turns out that my lecturer owned a restaurant and took the liberty to order us lunch boxes there – which tasted bland, to put it mildly. I had to go to the canteen and pay out-of-my-pocket to get a proper meal.
In other words, part of my money had wastefully gone to her restaurant, without my consent. Who knows how much money the department gave her for our lunch budget.
In another university – a private one I shall not name. It touted itself as a first-class business education provider preparing graduates to take on the world. Yet it had squatting toilets, most of which did not have toilet paper or hand soap. Read More…
