Not Comparable

It is evident that these five universities are incomparable with a good university in developed areas. There is always the need for highly qualified lecturers. The Thai government has, in the last 2-3 decades, spent a considerable amount of money in sending students overseas to be trained as teachers and lecturers. If we standardize our own universities or else have a new academic institution with the equivalent standard of a university in the real sense, we could obviously reduce our expenditure on these student trips.

Local students would have the chance to study in Thailand, in a good university with the necessary facilities and, of course, with no trouble. Oddly enough, our students who are studying abroad both on government scholarships and through private funds are not particularly successful. This should not be interpreted that English or any other language is the basic problem, but that because of living in a new and strange world, and living with people of different beliefs and attitudes, many overseas students (not only the Thais), return to their respective countries with no degrees, and some suffer from mental breakdowns. Nevertheless quite a number of students struggle through all of these social and academic problems and are, indeed, very successful.

About ten years ago, an estimate showed that the Thai Government had to spend over 35 million baht (60 baht—£1) on students who won government scholarships to study abroad, expenditure which could be spent on giving the scholarships to 3365 local students to study a four-year course in Chulalongkorn University.

View of Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok.

Expenditure for higher education is not the only problem in Thailand. There are many more problems existing in the five universities—namely the problems of big classes, resulting from too many students but insufficient lecturers, the low salaries of university lecturers, the lack of qualified personnel and personal problems of students themselves that affect their studies.