Rankings no surprise

Re: “Rankings not be-all, end-all for Thai unis”, ( BP, Oct 3).

While Dr Hayes is correct in observing that endowments beget rankings and rankings beget endowments (everyone wants to bet on a winner), the article glosses over some important reasons for Thailand’s consistently low international rankings among universities worldwide, including:

The impossibly heavy teaching loads of Thai university professors, precluding any time to do the research and publication necessary to be considered seriously among the world’s top institutions of higher education; and

The unrealistically low pay of Thai university faculties (most K-12 teachers in the myriad international schools in Thailand make substantially more than university professors here; also compare Thai university salaries with those of highly ranked institutions in Hong Kong and Japan).

But most important is a rigidly hierarchical social system and lack of freedom of speech which stifle any intellectual curiosity and critical thinking or discourse. And, by the way, while the author can be excused for placing Harvard in Boston (it’s actually across the river in Cambridge), Stanford is about as far away from Los Angeles, both geographically and culturally, as Bangkok is from Udon Thani. THOM HUEBNER