Higher ed undervalued

Re: “University challenge”, ( BP, Aug 12).

As a university teacher here in Thailand and someone that possesses four degrees, the problem of decreasing enrolment has two main factors that if addressed properly would make higher education more viable.

The first issue is to eliminate discrimination over age within the job market. I only have students that are in the 18-23-yearold range.

Never have I had a working adult as a student. Since Thailand forces people into retiring at 60 years old there is no financial incentive for someone over 35 to learn a new skill set or change fields.

In the US, only a third of the students are from high school. The majority of the students are working adults.

Middle-aged students are swayed to take on the financial expenditure because they know they can work into their 70s if they want in order to offset the personal investment.

Eliminating ageism would also alleviate some of the pressures of having an ageing society because the seniors would be more self-sufficient rather than dependent.

The second issue is something that I do not have an answer for but it needs to be addressed, and that is the transition over time of learning for the sake of knowledge itself to learning is only for jobs.

Unless a university offers doctoral programmes, then they are not about “higher learning”. They are really just training institutions — not collegial environments.

Harvard was founded in the US in 1636. Over a 150 years before the country was founded and it was not about “jobs”. Western culture has a long history and tradition valuing knowledge and has created today’s idea of public education.

Thailand is new to this having only allowed higher learning to be available to the general public for less than 100 years. The culture here needs to value learning and intelligence for universities to thrive and to make up for the time lost. There are no Neil DeGrasse Tysons, Michio Kakus, Stephen Hawkings or Carl Sagans within Thai popular culture yet.

Valuing knowledge is something that needs to be supported in order for learning to flourish and for society to increase its collective intelligence. DARIUS HOBER