I’ve got a story in the global edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The headline is “In Thailand, Grand Plans for Higher Education.”
Here’s the lede and the first few graphs:
On the fifth floor of an unremarkable concrete building in the Thai capital, several dozen students are scribbling furiously as they take their end-of-term examinations. The clusters of test-takers do not come close to filling the rows of wooden desks that stretch the length and breadth of the cavernous room where, administrators say, 1,000 people can attend a class.
This is Ramkhamhaeng University, a college with one of the world’s largest enrollments: More than 300,000 students spread across 24 campuses study in this system, say officials. Enrollment is open to all who can afford it, and the institution is very inexpensive: Tuition is roughly $30 per term.
Universities like Ramkhamhaeng are a key part of the success Thailand has had in expanding its higher-education system and enrollment rates in recent decades. While inequities remain, gross enrollment rates have increased from 19 percent of the college-age population in the early 1990s to 50 percent in 2007, and the number of colleges and universities has risen from five in 1967 to 166 in 2008, according to a World Bank report from last year.
But while institutions like Ramkhamhaeng have opened educational doors for some, education observers say colleges in Thailand need to modernize and become less insular.
