เรื่องเกี่ยวกับมหาวิทยาลัย

ภารกิจด้านบริการวิชาการในกระบวนทัศน์ใหม่

เรื่องเกี่ยวกับมหาวิทยาลัย
           เมื่อวันที่ ๑๒ กย. ๔๘ ผมได้รับ อี-เมล์ ากคุณพรทิพย์ กาญจนนิยต ผอ. ฟุลไบรท์ ดังนี้

Dear All, Before I leave for Pattani tomorrow, let me share with you several other matters I've learned from the AUAP conference na ka.
 
It's about the outreach activities. Do you think farangs, including those in Australia and NZ ( Singapore) seem to be more active in their outreach activities than Thais mai ka?
 
At AUAP, Prof. Dr. Di Yerbury of Macquarie pointed out that a new term has entered the vocabulary of Australian higher education via the UK 'Third Stream activity', referring o community and industry engagement as part of the role of universities. For her university, its key external consituencies range from alumni (basically, we're real inexperienced in this area too na ka.), government bodies, local community, clinical patients, media, educational bodies, professions, business and industry to general public and international communities and institutions.
 
She cited 30 approaches to outreach, e.g.  proposal for private hospital on campus, privately funded and run hotel on campus, joint commercialization of innovative technology and intellectual properety, links with publishers, and contract with Road Safety Authority (running the road safety for children project for the past 10 years), etc.
 
Her leadership is prominent and she's emphasized the importance of the administrative support and communication with her faculty while keeping good relations with the community and industry. She pointed out that all the projects and activities the university's involved in are all based on its strengths. When skimming through the info. provided, it's clear that the university's been able to sustain the relations while having increased partners in the industry and community too.
 
Another speaker, Prof. Ng Wun Jern, co-director of Singapore-MIT Alliance, National University of Singapore, talked about the industry relations too. He mentioned to me that Singapore's very different from many others in Asia and the Pacific ka...the pace in his country definitely is much faster and the advancement in terms of the university-industry relations go much further than others too ngai ka.
 
In his presentation, he emphasized the need for universities to have stakeholders's support to gain access to resources and so they must be good at what they are doing and must be seen to be good at what they do too.....kae nee gor yaak maak maak na ka....self-assessment without bias immediately na ka, everyone!
 
He said that school-industry network is important because it provides employment for graduates, feedback, support for courses (as it lends some degree of 'realism'), and research opportunities. He also pointed out that we could use networks for benchmarking in addition to learning and making our own institutions more visible to get more cooperation.
 
With the struggle of the universities to seek more funding in time of decreasing government's support/ subsidies, outreach, especially with industry would play more significant role na ka. However, we should consider the balance in terms of monetary returns as against the main mission of institutions to be models of a good society, and as against the challenge of our universities where great brains unite to contribute to the community development.
 
I also read an article under 'Productivity World' of the Thailand Productivity Institute about outreach/ community service. One author said that we shouldn't wait until we retire to start community service....I think our universities've been doing quite a bit but there might be a need to discuss our thinking and agreed definition for community service/outreach in the future na ka.
 
Too long laew ka....bye+ bye ka.
Porntip
           ผมชอบอ่าน อี-เมล์ ของ ผอ. พรทิพย์ เพราะให้แนวคิดใหม่ๆ เกี่ยวกับอุดมศึกษา     ผมสามารถเอาความรู้เหล่านี้ไปใช้ในฐานะที่เป็นกรรมการสภามหาวิทยาลัยหลายแห่ง     เรื่อง “ภารกิจกลุ่มที่ ๓” (คืองานบริการวิชาการ มองในบริบทที่กว้าง ภายใต้กระบวนทัศน์ใหม่) ของมหาวิทยาลัยนี้สำคัญมาก    สกอ. และ ทปอ. น่าจะได้จัดระบบและจัดหลักการ (วิชาการ) และหลักปฏิบัติสำหรับประเทศไทย
วิจารณ์ พานิช
๒๕ กย. ๔๘