Thailand’s universities were founded as part of the Thai state apparatus, funded by the government budget and regulated by bureaucratic rules. Academics were civil servants, and were given the same benefits as other government employees.

However, Thailand has shifted, like many of its neighbours, towards a push for university autonomy. In the last two decades, 19 universities became autonomous. Today, greater insistence from the state has made autonomy not so much an option as a decree. Among autonomy’s many ramifications, a major consequence is the sense of frustration and instability it has created.

There are five main guidelines for universities in shifting to autonomous status, one of which is that faculty become “employees” of the universities, as opposed to their old status as civil servants. It is this particular change of status that has caused discomfort, for the lives of the “employees” within and beyond campus walls. This article will describe the consequences of autonomy on a university’s decision-making processes, before launching into greater detail on how the professional and personal livelihoods of university “employees” have changed due to autonomy.

AUTONOMY AND DECISION-MAKING

There are advantages to a university being autonomous. Being autonomous promises, in theory, effective decision-making processes by devolving decision-making from the central government, with its long time lines and red tape, to the University Council of each institution.

In practice, however, long time lines and red tape are not removed. Rather, they manifest themselves differently. A new form of centralisation is occurring in the university – centralisation from within.

Every decision is made by the central executive, and individual faculty and staff have little freedom or flexibility to make choices. One academic explained as follows:

[Autonomy] is power-centric and totalitarian from the centre… The state has given all the authority to the executives, who can announce all the new rules and regulations to control all the employees – from civil servants, to students, to everybody else.

 

University staff fear that autonomy will create a new, internal hegemony, and are hoping for ways to enable checks and balances to mitigate abuses of power. Employees of the university fear for their job security, and have lost a sense of pride in their work.

THE LIVELIHOOD OF “EMPLOYEES”

The autonomous university policy in Thailand has created a whirlwind change for academics. Traditionally, academics in Thai public universities were considered civil servants, who received royal accolades and a multitude of welfare benefits.

In contrast, they are now judged based on key performance indicators, such as the number of their publications and the amount of external grant money received. While sometimes emotional in nature, the consequences of this new treatment are also practical. At professional schools, for instance, the new focus on research has had a negative repercussion on the morale of the professional staff, who would prefer to spend their time on ground-breaking laboratory experiments and provide clinical leadership, rather than to go through the mechanical processes of publications. Equally, faculty members also feel penalised for doing valuable research whose output take longer to materialise. The pressure from annual publication targets can be problematic, and makes publications less comprehensive by focusing on quantity rather than quality.

Autonomy has also affected the lives of the university’s “employees” beyond the walls of the university. With autonomy, welfare benefits have also been reduced to the point where they are sometimes even considered inferior to those of civil servants. For some academics now, welfare benefits are not extended to family members, and there is no longer a pension scheme. Some academics claim that they cannot even afford private medical care anymore.

Academic staff feel as though they are “employees of a company rather than a respectable member of the university”. The implication is that persons of the former group are treated with a short-term outlook, while those of the latter group are respected and given a long-term sense of security. Many academics prefer to remain or to return to being civil servants due to many factors, including sentimentality, job security, and, as mentioned, welfare benefits.

CONCLUSION

Autonomy for universities has been a policy aspiration for Thai policymakers and leading academics in higher education for five decades. Thai public universities, known to be bureaucratic and slow, were hoping for an improvement in finances, academics matters and human resources. After five decades of debate, the policy has been implemented at institutional levels.

In truth, bureaucracy might be manifesting itself in a different way with university autonomy, this time from within the campus walls. There is a greater pressure in both universities for academics to conduct research and to publish, though these might not actually be the best activities for them to accomplish high-quality work. Contracts, quality assessments and key performance indicators have been used to compel academics to follow rigid guidelines. Even though there is greater monetary gain from becoming a university employee, there is also a threat to non-monetary security. A sense of pride and long-term security among academics are dissipating, as their universities become autonomous.