ความเป็นนานาชาติของอุดมศึกษา

คุณพรทิพย์ กาญจนนิยต ([email protected]) ผอ. ของ Fulbright Thailand ส่ง e-mail เมื่อวันที่ ๖ มิ.ย. ๔๘ เล่าเรื่อง internationalization ของมหาวิทยาลัย มาจากต่างประเทศ น่าสนใจมาก    ผมจึงเอามา post สู่กัน

Dear All,
Before I leave the luxury of this Internet access, let me tell you what I've learned from
this NAFSA conference na ka...by the way, for those of you who might be 'ngong ngong' what NAFSA
is....it is an association of international educators ka.....the acronym is the original one ka.
This year, I'm most interested in sessions relating to research ka....the first one is a research
study being undertaken by Japan. The Government wanted to identify a set of indicators to assess
the internationalization of universities which will be applicable to the Japanese context.
Researchers under this project studied the European and American models as well as made visits to
the two continents. The researchers feel that whatever the universities are looking for could be
very different from what the media is after ka. While universities wish to determine qualitative
dimensions of the internationalization, the press is always after quantitative results for their
rankings.
Some university presidents don't understand what internationalization means either....some thought
of it as 'being famous' and it so happens that if budget is required for related activities,
faculty and staff concerned would have to say that the activities would be for heightening the fame
of the universities....taloke mai og in reality na ka!!
The research will be completed in 2006. One thing that has been made very clear is that efforts to
come up with indicators should be from universities themselves, not from the government ka..pen
ngai ka, this idea?
There was a poster session on research studies conducted by some universities. They include survey
on why students chose to study in Canada and what they thought about the academic experience, the
relations between GPA and achievement in studying a MBA program of foreign students, and possible
diversity gains from university faculty engagin in international teaching and research. I strongly
feel that we need serious commitment and support of high-level administrators, both at the policy
and university levels to conduct more research in related areas. We haven't done much yet and if we
do, we haven't shared much either!
I also wish to share with you that the post 9/11 has continued to bear impacts on how people handle
their mail and packages ka. We sent some books to our Fulbrighter who's chief of the Asian Reading
Room at the Library of Congress. He said normally, it'd take about 2-3 weeks for clearance after a
package is received ka. A senior reporter of the Washington Post also pointed out that even now, no
one would pick up unopen mail, being scared of the Antrax ngai ka. Life's more and more difficult
na ka. Sometimes, I couldn't help but feel that with a lot of security systems we have, like going
through some processes, passwords, codes, to enter an office building, we've turned ourselves to be
like prisoners mai ka?
 
Anyway, may I sign off on a lighter note by asking you one question ka....who are sweeter when it
comes to food... between Thais and Americans?......answer in the next mail ka!
By the way, if you happened to answer my previous mail, please resend na ka...we've just changed
our server company and so I wasn't able to access mail sent the past several days ka.
 
Bye+ bye ka.
Warm regards.
Porntip