As reported by Thailand’s Office of Higher Education Commission (OHEC) in 2017, there were 16,910 international students enrolled in the country’s universities. The top five countries of origin of foreign students in the country were China, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, in that order. Every country in the era of globalisation has emphasised education as key to meeting its socioeconomic development needs. By the early 1990s, the Thai economy was becoming increasing globalised.

The premise was that for Thailand to be internationally competitive, it needed to internationalise its education system, to prepare young people for the increasingly intercultural era of globalisation. The development of policies of internationalisation in higher education in Thailand started with the 15-Year Long Range Plan on Higher Education, from 1990 to 2004, issued by the Office of the Higher Education Commission under the Ministry of Education. This led to the establishment of ASEAN European Academic University Network (ASEA-UNINET), University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific (UMAP) and the Thailand ASEAN Exchange Program, among many others. The goal of the second 15-Year Long Range Plan on Higher Education of Thailand, covering the years 2008 to 2022, is high quality for the Thai higher education system. Such a system is expected to lead to the development of graduates of quality, who are capable of life-long employment and adaptability.

Knowledge and innovation — which are basic and critical to the country’s global competitiveness and meant to support the sustainable development in the whole of Thailand — will be major outcomes.

The quality system will be achieved through mechanisms and measures of good governance, financing instrument, higher education standards and university networking. In recent years, Thailand’s aspiration of becoming a regional education hub grew in tandem with developments in the realm of ASEAN integration, particularly around 2015 with the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). This witnessed a growth in intra-ASEAN exchange programmes, such as the ASEAN International Mobility for Students (AIMS) Program that promotes student mobility through credit transfers within the ASEAN region.

Yet, beneath the surface, a number of challenges and untapped opportunities remain for the internationalisation of higher education in Thailand. In this study, we feature the case of Payap University — the first private university set up in Thailand outside of the Bangkok area, and Mahidol University — the public university in Bangkok that has been for years ranked the top university in the country.

PAYAP UNIVERSITY

Payap University’s long connection with the Thai Christian Foundation (TCF) and the United States has been a factor for many from the West who come to study or teach at the university.

Payap University established the Office of Internationalization for the purpose of enhancing international and multicultural understanding, communication, and coordination. This office also handles student exchange programmes for both inbound and outbound students, including the coordination of memoranda of understanding with other academic institutions.

Payap University has been offering an international programme on International Business since 2001, and this has been the main draw for students from South Korea, China, Japan, Germany, and the US to study at the university. While there are 11 higher education institutions in Chiang Mai city, only Payap University offers such a programme in northern Thailand, to date.

As a private university, Payap University is able to charge higher tuition fees than its public counterparts, and this positions the university well in hiring qualified lecturers from abroad. The university is still under some degree of supervision from the OHEC, and its standards are deemed to be as high as in state universities in Thailand.

The internationalised atmosphere at Payap University puts it in a different league from other universities in Chiang Mai province, mainly due to the many foreigners working and studying at the university, which in turn provides many short courses such as for the TESOL Certificate, Linguistics Certificate Courses, Thai Language, Culture and Ethics Training, Southeast Asian Studies, and Foundation Studies Program.

Payap University offers the Study Abroad Program, for which the tuition fees are cheaper than for the students to go abroad by themselves. One semester spent in the US under the programme costs only about 160,000 to 200,000 baht (US$4,800 to 6,000), compared to upwards of US$20,000 if the student were to be enrolled directly in a US university.

MAHIDOL UNIVERSITY

Mahidol University provides scholarships for visiting professors and scholar to work on its campus. This offers opportunities for Thai professors, researcher, faculty members and students to conduct academic discussions, research and publish papers in cooperation
with international scholars.

The university also provides scholarships for visiting research students, in order to provide opportunities for visiting international students from ASEAN and Northeast Asia, and to enhance the international atmosphere of the university.

Students have to write their dissertations in English. This effectively means that Thai students applying to enter Mahidol University must not only be among the most outstanding of their cohorts, but that they must also already be proficient in English. The university requires students to demonstrate a certain level of English proficiency by obtaining at least a prescribed minimum score in TOEFL, the standardised test for English, before they graduate. Moreover, there is now also a requirement for academic and support staff of the university to take such standardised tests for English — including IELTS — and obtain certain prescribed scores.

The university encourages academic staff to publish in international academic journals listed in databases like SCOPUS and ISI. They offer monetary incentives that increase with the impact factor of the journal in which their academics are published, and these schemes differ from faculty to faculty.

Additionally, the university encourages postgraduate students to publish in such international academic journals. For this, they stand to win awards: 30,000 baht (US$900) for doctoral students, and 20,000 baht (US$600) for master’s students.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To ensure the success of internationalisation policies for higher education in Thailand, the OHEC should provide budgetary support budget and aid Thai universities in networking with their overseas counterparts.

To address the need to improve the foreign language skills of Thai students, particularly in English, the Thai government, higher education institutions and the private sector should collaborate closely on policies and plans for internationalisation. Additionally, Thai universities should provide for students to study English in every semester of their course.