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ฉบับที่ ๓ วันที่ ๙ ก.ค. ๕๒
More from the World Conference on two topics of degree mills and ranking ka.
Much was discussed about degree mills and accreditation mills especially with the advanced technology and the urge to get diplomas to seek employment and to upgrade one’s status.
OECD and Unesco have developed Guidelines for Quality provision in Cross-border Higher Education. I have seen and heard about it a few times in different forums and admired Unesco for its ability to disseminate it. However, it’s far from enough as it’s still limited to a few circles ka. Would urge sor gor or to translate the document and disseminate it through various channels plus some form of seminars for information, awareness building and suggestions for practical use.
A Japanese representative said he got a letter from the State of Hawaii, asking for the closure of U. offering equivalent bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees. He said it was not possible for him to do anything as it is outside Japan ka. Another person pointed out that some claimed that their programs got Unesco’s approval.
With such incidents that occur more and more often in our world, international networks are important for information sharing and for consumers to know educational systems, standards and evaluation of countries they are interested in applying to universities.
Institutions/ corporations giving out loans or scholarships must make sure that the recipients don’t apply to those rogue institutions. One suggested that there should be black/ grey lists too.
Well! This is also about demand and supply as well as the wrong value given to degree, instead of the right value of learning na ka.
A bit on the ranking ka!
Carolyn Campbell from QAA, England, pointed out international rankings are real and will be here to stay. She said, if we don’t like it, we’ll do our own ranking like
EU ka; it will have its own alternative ranking.
Students are using them but when noting that only 3% of the students went to top-ranked universities, it’s really interesting what the rankings could be put to best use na ka! The rankings could be easy and quick information for the public and accuracy is another aspect to be aware of.
Students should understand how to use them wisely; so should universities ka ..our Thai universities could place far too important to the rankings ..they should really think of the reason why ..for status, for more student enrollment, for stronger database system, for face or for what na ka. As after all, the rankings don’t tell much about the real quality of their institutions, jing mai ka?
Cheers.
Porntip
ฉบับที่ ๔ (สุดท้าย) ๙ ก.ค. ๕๒
My last mail about the conclusion of the conference before I leave for the airport to go home ka!
You all should be able to access Unesco’s website for the final version of the Communique but let me highlight key points that struck me laew guun na ka.
There was a discussion between higher education as a public good or as a public service. Finally, it seems that public good wins ka!
Let me highlight a few issues related to the Communique na ka.
Higher education has the social responsibility to lead us to understand multifaceted issues and to address global challenges like food security, climate change, intercultural dialogue, etc.
Links between access and efforts to assure the success of learners, teacher training, greater regional cooperation, partnerships for research, staff and student exchanges, and strong foundation for locally-relevant science and technology are stressed.
Higher education and research are like coffeemate that must go alongside each other with proper directions for local development and beyond. The results of scientific research should be made more available through ICT and Open Education Resources ka.
I like it when mentioning about integrity of higher education institutions and the need for them to share more information, be open and transparent. As we have quality assurance systems in place, the integrity and transparency must be emphasized yoo laew over and over again!
Diversity of higher education institutions is emphasized because it’s needed for different groups of population in the countries.
A General Rapporteur urged that politicians make investments in higher education as a public good and give priority to international cooperation. For higher education institutions, she said they needed to redefine their objectives to fit in with their contexts and give importance to training of their teachers while enhancing their image and increasing pays. As regards Unesco, their role could relate to sharing of best practices, benchmarks and use of statistics, etc.
Students were given a floor for them to voice their views. They also scattered to all the parallel sessions to share their ideas. They wanted to become more involved in governance bodies and in quality assurance processes.
The African region is center of attention not only of Unesco but also partner agencies like the World Bank, SIDA and other funding agencies.
On the whole, my annual leave was worth the time and efforts because of many reasons ka.
Learned the current and future trends, known what international organizations and countries are heading to, and started thinking back to what we can do at Fulbright and in Thailand.
One last thing I’d like to share is about the Thai delegation ka. Ajarn Mor+ Vicharn along with the others took the conference seriously. Even when we didn’t attend an afternoon session (as it was devoted solely to Africa-related issues), Ajarn Mor+ Vicharn asked all of us to have our own meeting, discussing the issues we wanted to see initiated and implemented in our country ka.
We discussed how education should be used as our foreign policy tool and agreed that Thai higher education should benefit from the existence of the international agencies based in Bangkok, especially those directly related to education.
After almost three hours of discussion, I become more hopeful to see our higher education move in a firmer and more consistent direction. I also have a strong feeling that we do have funding allocated, we did do and achieve so much, we are doing so many things still to promote our education, we do have commitments of people involved.
The only thing we don’t quite have yet is the integration of the things we have and have done ka.
Communication flow, culture of openness and readiness to share, consistent efforts, and key people to manage at the macro-level seem to stay on as our opportunities for improvement ka.
Warm regards.
Porntip
