During an interview on the "Direct Line to Government House" programme on Channel 11 and Public Relations Department radio stations, Wijit emphasised that autonomous universities were government-owned agencies but in a more independent manner - unlike state enterprises or public and private agencies.

They would have more flexibility in administration and more academic freedom, he said.

To people's worries that, once they became autonomous, the government would only partially fund the universities, leading to more expensive tuition fees, Wijit said that they were state agencies to provide educational services to people, thus the government would ensure the change would not affect service users or students.

The objective of university autonomy was not to drive universities to earn money, he said, and the government would provide sufficient funds for them if they had expenses and could not find additional money.

There were already six autonomous universities and they had not raised tuition fees to the point that it hurt poor people, he said.

Besides, there were measures to help the poor including free scholarships from universities, scholarships from the private sector, student loans and part-time job finding services, he said, thus he did not want people to worry too much about the tuition fees because the government is in control of the matter.

"If there were complaints about a tuition-fee increase and the government found it was so expensive that it affected the majority, the ministry would propose to the Cabinet that it stop the increase. The university must obey such a Cabinet resolution and could not overprice its tuition fees," he said.

Wijit dismissed the concern that autonomy might lead to the selling of degrees, saying that it was unlikely, as the independent universities would have good-quality education with able and academically excellent lecturers. He also dismissed the possibility of universities developing business-prone administrations, saying the law clearly stated that the educational institutions must operate according to the public benefit. If the universities were able to conduct good research, gain patents and then give them to the private sector, he said that would be regarded as the universities' income and they could use the money to improve their educational services.

The Nation