Published on October 07, 2005

The Technology Promotion Association (Thailand-Japan), a non-profit Japanese organisation, is planning a private university to help Thailand develop the most appropriate skills in engineering.

As Thailand still lacks people trained in technology and engineering, the association hopes that this move will boost those numbers.

Under the plan, the association will initially provide up to Bt600 million to set up the facility. The association was set up in Thailand by the Japanese government 32 years ago to support Thailand’s industrialisation process. An executive committee member, Itti Rittaporn, said that work on the project was now underway and was expected to be completed within the next two years.

“Construction will begin in the next two months and be complete by the end of next year. We hope the university will be officially opened in May 2007,” Itti said.

Called the Thai-Nichi Institute of Technology, the university will initially comprise three faculties – automotive engineering, information technology and computer science, and industrial management. The automotive engineering course will cover designing and developing engines and electronic systems for vehicles.

The information technology and computer science course will focus on four areas – embedded systems, customer-relations management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), computer graphics, and databases and networks. The industrial-management course will be related to management systems for industry and production systems.

Itti said the association had surveyed market requirements in Thailand and found that training in these fields was not yet sufficient. Establishing this university would help meet the demand. To hasten the availability of qualified people, the university will accept high-level vocational students in related areas, letting them continue their studies for a bachelor’s degree.

“With this group of students, we will take only two years to get bachelor’s-degree engineers for industry,” he said. However, the university will also accept high school students for its four-year bachelor’s degree course. The university hopes initially to be able to produce 360 engineers each year from its three faculties.

As the association has links with the private sector, it will try to have the university’s students trained in private companies to hone their skills. Itti said that the association would assist the university to get sponsorships from Japanese companies to provide scholarships for the university’s students for training in Japan.

Creating links with the private sector and industry is an important step for the university, especially when it comes to matching industry’s needs. Apart from engineering courses, the university will also offer Japanese courses to allow students to learn Japanese language with the hope of training Thai engineers that can speak Japanese. “We want our students to become engineers who can speak languages other than their own,” he said.

The association has also asked for assistance from the professors and lecturers of four major local engineering universities to help draft the university’s courses. These include King Mongkut University of Technology Lad Krabang, King Mongkut University of Technology Thonburi, Thammasat University and the Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology.

Pongpen Sutharoj

The Nation

pongpen@nationgroup.com

Post your comment to this story here