Get rid of Ohec

Re: “Valuable lessons from falling rankings”, (Opinion, March 19).

One of the things that become very clear from the Times University Rankings is that the top ones on the list are either private or autonomous universities. Autonomy is the key to excellence. Just upgrading Ohec into a full ministry is not going to improve the quality of higher education in Thailand. Instead of focusing their efforts on meeting National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (ONESQA) requirements, which add to the bureaucratic burden, Thai universities should aspire for regional accreditation from third parties and then slowly move towards gaining status at international level.

The current “open wallet” policy for admissions being practiced in most universities is partly responsible for the degradation of higher education. A student with a bachelor’s degree in arts can get admission into a master’s programme without meeting any other prerequisite. As a result the graduate degrees from Thai universities look more like ornaments. The current practice of awarding PhDs based on poor advising skills by unqualified faculties is also responsible for the current crisis.

With increased autonomy universities will be able to enforce prerequisites for admission and appoint qualified faculty and practitioners to lead the graduate and research programmes. In a nutshell, universities can only become competitive by having freedom to create dynamic curriculums, hire highly qualified faculty and lead research and innovation in sync with the public and private sector. But the first step in this process is to dismantle the monstrous monopoly called Ohec which has failed to reform itself.

KULDEEP NAGI