An educational watchdog has found that Thai universities are seriously challenged by a lack of qualified lecturers, while vocational schools are failing to get students into the labour market.

The results were revealed recently by the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (Onesqa), which collated information from 260 universities and 780 vocational schools in Onesqa's first round of educational checks conducted between 2001 and 2005.

Onesqa director Somwang Pitiyanuwat said that a university should have a minimum number of doctorate lecturers, or 35 per cent, but only 23 per cent of lecturers on average had doctorate degrees.

"We need to urgently produce more qualified lecturers for all education levels - especially universities," he said, adding that nowadays very few people want to pursue a career in academia due to the low salaries and lack of incentive.

The research also found that the lack of qualified personnel forced lecturers to be responsible for too many classes, leaving them no time to produce academic research and articles. What's more, most universities only had a small budget for research and did little to seek outside sources of finance.

Somwang said an average of 82 per cent of university students got jobs within a year after graduation. However, less than 20 per cent of vocational students managed to get into the labour market because they have always received much lower pay than those who finish a bachelor's degree.

As a result, most vocational students are forced to go on and study for a bachelor's degree, however, the limited fields provided by universities force them to leave their vocational skills and change to other general fields, he said.

"The ratio of vocational students to elementary students should be 50/50, so that it matches the demand of the labour market. But the amount of vocational students is only 30 per cent now."

Somwang said the Education Ministry planned a Vocational Education Act to promote vocational education by giving students a bachelor's degree in the field of technology. Further, the ministry needed to establish an institute to help transform craftsmanship levels of vocational graduates to academic degrees, Somwang said.

"For example, if the institute indicates that a vocational graduate gets the highest level in computer skills, he should be paid a 'doctorate rate' salary," Somwang said. The improvement would also help reduce violence among vocational students, he said.

Previously, the Onesqa revealed the results of the first round of quality checks on 30,010 basic education schools and discovered that more than 4.5 million students were studying in 15,000 schools with alarmingly poor standards.

Most of these are small primary schools in rural provinces.

More than 5,000 schools were identified as having fair standards while over 8,000 others were found to have good standards on all counts.

Somwang said the former Education Ministry had taken action since the findings were released. But its initial plan was held up by a Cabinet screening panel early this year, then the House was dissolved and nothing had been done since.

Onesqa has already begun a second round of quality checks and has so far evaluated 7,786 basic education schools, 188 vocational schools and 76 universities. Its first-phase findings should be available within the next two months, while the second round of quality checks would be completed by 2010.

In the second round of checks, universities are divided into four categories including research-emphasis, social development, art development and those producing graduates.

Chularat Saengpassa,

Chatrarat Kaewmorakot

The Nation