Students are worried the merger will waste 12 months of education in the programmes in which they enrolled in last year.

"I am going to register for a summer course for my second year, but I don't know whether I am still eligible for the loan. Without the loan, I don't have enough money to pay for the tuition fees," one student said on a web board.

This student was among the 320,000 registering for the income-contingent loan (ICL) programme, which offers loans to university students regardless of their financial status.

The loan amount is subject to the inflation rate and students are only required to repay the loan when they earn at least Bt16,000 a month.

Introduced by the previous government last year, the ICL was expected to fully replace the old student-loan programme that offered soft loans to students from low-income families only. The ICL was applied to first-year university students.

However, after the incumbent administration came to power and Wijit took the helm of the Education Ministry, the ICL was doomed.

To Wijit, the ICL programme was not in line with the principle that the government should support students from poor families.

While serving as the finance minister, MR Pridiyathorn Devakula also saw the ICL as a burden on the state budget. The merging of the ICL and the older student-loan fund programme took place in January.

As of now, the students under the ICL have no idea what the future holds for them.

Of the ICL loan recipients, about 100,000 are set to suffer serious problems because they will not qualify as loan recipients if they have to abide by rules of the other loan programme, which required that students come from families who earn less than Bt150,000 a year.

"My parents earn more than Bt150,000 a year but there are so many things they need to pay for," another student complained.

A parent, who asked for anonymity, said her son was now an engineering student in an international course based largely on ICL money.

"I can just about pay for 20 per cent of the tuition fees of such a course. So, if ICL stops, my son will have to enrol in another programme and start from year one again," she said.

The student-loan fund manager Prempracha Supasamout, said he understood the feelings of both the students and parents. He too was waiting anxiously for Wijit to decide how to provide loans following the merging - and how to help the students.

"The education minister should make the decision. Things should not be left pending. The students need to plan for their future," Prempracha said.

Up until now, the education minister had only set up a panel to study the student-loan programme without any clear policy, even though the responsibility to tackle problems arising from the merging of the two student-loan funds rests with him.

With Pridiyathorn leaving the post of finance minister vacant, it is even more urgent for Wijit to make a move for the students' benefits.

The University Presidents Council of Thailand (UPTC) said that if the government remains silent on the issue, it was going to convene an extraordinary meeting later this month to discuss the student-loan problems.

"The government needs to think about parents with many children," UPCT chairman and Mae Fah Luang University president Wanchai Sirichana said.

Dhurakij Pundit University president Anumongkol Sirivethin said the unclear policies about

student-loan funds will also affect university admissions this year.

Chularat Saengpassa

The Nation