Education offers tough lessons in 2016
As 2016 comes to a close, the Bangkok Post takes a look at the top five education stories of the year.
1 THAI DENTIST LOAN DEFAULT
Back in February, the story of former dentistry lecturer Dolrudee Jumlongras who breached her government scholarship contract and left the burden of paying off the debt to her guarantors sparked widespread outrage.
Her tuition was funded by her alma mater, Mahidol University, under an agreement that she would return to the university to teach. Instead, Ms Dolrudee took a position at Harvard University and neglected to repay her debt, which had ballooned to 30 million baht with interest and fees.
Ms Dolrudee, since married and settled down in the US and now a naturalised US citizen, was seen as beyond the reach of Thai law. The controversy went viral after one of the guarantors of her loan, a dentist named Padet Poolwithayakit, took to Facebook and claimed she broke the scholarship contract.
Thousands of netizens voiced their outrage at Harvard’s Facebook page and clicked on the one-star review to pressure the university to remove Ms Dolrudee from her teaching position. The move sent the university’s rating on Facebook briefly tumbling from 5 stars to 1.3 stars.
In Thailand, meanwhile, Mahidol University and the Office of the Higher Education Commission (Ohec) sought legal action against Ms Dolrudee seeking to have her declared bankrupt, to recover her scholarship debt.
The social media pressure finally forced Ms Dolrudee to email her guarantors asserting she intended to repay them plus interest. She insisted the allegations against her were inaccurate as she had asked for flexibility in repaying the loan and promised to send US$50,000 as a “good faith’’ payment to Mahidol University in 2014.
However, according to Mr Padet, no money has been transferred from Ms Dolruedee to any of her guarantors. This case also spurred the government into creating more efficient terms and criteria for academic scholarships to reduce the risk of recipients breaching repayment contracts.
2 HIGH-TECH STUDENT CHEATS
In May, academic circles were shaken by media reports of three medical school applicants at Rangsit University (RSU) being caught in a hightech exam cheating scam involving “spy” glasses and tutors sending coded correct answers via smartwatches.
The RSU cancelled the entrance exams for its College of Medicine and two other faculties, after “cheating by a well-organised syndicate and the employment of electronic devices”.
Arthit Ourairat, president of the RSU, said it was the most high-tech exam cheating system he had come across.
According to the RSU, each of the three student cheaters wore a “smart watch” provided by a private tutoring institute near the campus which would send them answers to the exam.
The gang sent three proxies to take the test at the same time in another room. They each wore a pair of glasses with a hidden video camera to sit the exam and capture the questions.
They left the room after 45 minutes, the minimum time requirement for applicants to finish up. The proxies then downloaded the video footage to their notebook computer and emailed it to the tutoring school.
At the tutoring school, a team quickly prepared correct answers to the exam. The answers were then sent to the three students via their smart watches.
However, invigilators became suspicious of the thick-framed glasses the three proxies were wearing and the fact they left the text room at the same time after having only sat for the test for 45 minutes.
Later, the three student cheats admitted to the crime. According to the students, they paid 50,000 baht as a deposit to the cram school. They were required to pay another 800,000 baht if the school successfully helped them pass the exam. The story spread globally and sparked concerns among teachers and examiners around the world.
3 ENTRANCE EXAM REVAMP
In June, the Education Ministry announced a plan to launch a new central entrance exam for universities, known as “Entrance 4.0”, largely to address complaints of unfair advantage voiced by many applicants.
Under the plan, the current admission system will be replaced with a central entrance exam in the 2018 academic year.
The landmark decision aims to scrap the current system where universities arrange their own entrance exams and admit students directly. Critics and students have complained the direct admission system gives unfair advantage to richer applicants who can afford to travel to many universities to sit for the exams and pay the associated application fees.
The more exams they sit, the better their chance of being admitted. However, when exam results are announced, applicants who have won several places choose to enroll in the most competitive universities and abandon places they have secured at other places, leaving many empty seats to be filled.
Under the new system, Mathayom 6 graduates who apply will take a central university entrance exam scheduled sometime after the middle of March each year. The applicants will sit for the usual GAT/PAT technical tests as well as the national nine core-subject examinations, a process which takes six to eight weeks. In between, no universities will be permitted to organise their own exams to admit students directly.
After the central exam results are announced, students will use the scores they receive to apply to faculties and universities of their choice.
They are allowed up to four choices. Universities will notify applicants whether they have been accepted or how many places are available through a clearing house. If applicants are not satisfied with the result and wish to re-apply in the second round of applications, they are free to do so, provided the universities of their choice still have places.
If the applicants win placement in the first round and decide to enroll, they will be barred from re-applying in the second round, the education permanent secretary said.
Moreover, under the new system, applicants will be informed of their scores, giving them a clear idea of how competitive they are against other applicants.
The system basically lets the applicants go through a single, central exam, and their scores can be used to seek placements in two rounds. Universities may be permitted to open direct admissions if they still have vacant seats left after two rounds of central admissions. According to the Education Ministry, this will ensure fair access for all students.
4 UNI COUNCILS IN STRIFE
In July, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha invoked his sweeping powers of Section 44 under the interim constitution to tackle chronic problems in the tertiary education sector.
Any university experiencing internal conflict with its governing council, a lack of good governance, or offering programmes without proper permission from the authorities may be subject to intervention by the Education Ministry.
Under the order, the education minister will be able to set up a special committee consisting of five to 15 people to temporarily step in and oversee a university’s operation. The panel would have the power to probe and end activities undertaken by university council members and can also suspend the universities from recruiting new students.
The move came after the Ministry of Education found several private and public universities had become entangled with internal disputes over who had the right to be their rector.
The ministry is also concerned some institutes were also providing sub-standard courses and had admitted students to programmes without proper permission or enrolled too many students in certain programmes.
Meanwhile, the Teachers’ Council of Thailand (TCT) said it would refuse to issue educational administrator licences to masters graduates from four private universities in the 2014 programme after a probe found irregularities in the study course.
The investigation set up by the TCT previously found 12 public and private universities nationwide to have admitted more students to the programme in 2014 than was allowed. The incident came to light when the TCT noticed a large number of graduates applying for educational administrator licences that year.
In addition, three private universities running the course faced complaints by Chinese students, who claimed they paid more money to the institutes than that stated on their receipts.
Other complaints included the universities’ failure to provide courses which matched the set curriculum and time schedule, inadequate qualifications of lecturers, and doubts over fees.
In the past, the Education Ministry did not have the power to intervene in or override the administrative power of universities because each university has its own University Act, but Section 44 has been a game-changer.
5 PISA RANKINGS PLUMMET
The 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) released earlier this month showed a sharp fall in maths, sciences and reading scores for Thai students.
Thai students were outperformed by their peers from several Asian countries as their scores were below the international average in all three core subjects.
Pisa, which is funded by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), surveyed the skills in mathematics, sciences and reading of more than half a million 15-year-olds across 70 countries worldwide.
The evaluation is done every three years. Thailand has participated in the evaluation since 2000.
According to the latest survey, Thailand ranked 54th for maths, 57th for reading, and 54th for sciences.
Thai students scored 415 points in maths, far lower than the international average of 490 points. In sciences, Thai students scored 421 points, much worse than the international average of 493. And in reading, the students scored 409 points, well below the OECD average of 493 points.
Thailand’s performance in reading and sciences has dropped sharply from 2012 when students scored 444 points in sciences and 441 in reading, while the country’s maths performance has worsened by 12 points since the last evaluation.
Standing at 54th, Thailand’s overall performance is far below other Asian countries. Singapore was the top performer in all three subjects in the Pisa tests, followed by Japan in second place, Taiwan in fourth, China in sixth and Vietnam in eighth.