ASEAN Community: Development, Challenge and Change for Thai Higher Education Sector

Abstract

The emergence of ASEAN community has changed and inspired ideas and expectations for Southeast Asian countries in many ways. As small and developing countries, the members of ASEAN need to be together for stronger in the global context. The collaboration and coordination between member countries are frequently mentioned in several aspects, including higher education (HE), in order for developing the region. An important concept announced by ASEAN concerns more attempts to promote higher degree of collaboration among HE sectors within the region. In Thailand, the HE sector was officially founded with the establishment of the first university in 1917. It could be considered as one of the very first HE sectors in the region. At present, there are approximately 160 higher education institutions (HEIs) across the country. Although the number of HEIs in Thailand has increased, the quality of them seems relatively questionable, especially at international level. In comparison to HEIs from other countries in the region, for instance Singapore, Thai HEIs always receive lower ranks in world rankings. This difference could probably be a crucial challenge for Thai HE sector in order to successfully collaborate or coordinate tasks with the HEIs from those member countries. Therefore, in my perspective, it is necessary to increasingly pay more attention to Thai HE sector in some aspects, such as teaching and learning, research and international languages, in order to adapt to the rapid changes within the region these days.



Author Information
Anupap Thupa-ang, Suan Dusit University, Thailand

Paper Information
Conference: ACEID2018
Stream: Education for international exchange

This paper is part of the ACEID2018 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon