8 of 17 PhD courses ‘below par’

Eight PhD courses have been found to be substandard, according to an annual audit by the Office of the Higher Education Commission.

Ohec’s secretary-general Supat Jampathong said yesterday the audit found eight doctoral study programmes, provided by seven Thai universities, failed to meet its standard.

The agency refused to reveal the names of the courses.

Mr Supat said a number of universities have exceeded their quota of student enrolments on some PhD courses, while others lacked qualified instructors.

To set up a PhD course, an institute needs to have at least three PhD holders in a related field develop the curriculum and serve on a panel to review theses, Mr Supat said.

The agency randomly inspected 17 programmes at the seven universities. “We were surprised to find that only nine meet our standards,’’ he said.

According to Ohec, there are now at least 1,000 PhD programmes being offered at a total of 33 Thai universities.

Mr Supat said the number of enrolled PhD students in Thailand ballooned to over 25,000 last year, up more than 18-fold from 1,380 in 2008.

“I think some universities clearly started offering the courses to make money rather than producing PhD graduates to meet the country’s needs,” he added.

The Ohec chief said those universities found to be providing substandard courses will be temporarily barred from recruiting new students to the programme until the problem is fixed.

Mr Supat said Ohec plans to examine more doctoral programmes.

The seven universities audited by Ohec this year are Assumption University, Chulalongkorn University, Eastern University of Management and Technology, Chiang Mai Rajabhat University, Buriram Rajabhat University, Silpakorn University and University College of the Crown (East Campus).