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Published on October 3, 2007

Sumet Yaemnoon said the four institutions would be autonomous in two months, following a meeting with the Budget Bureau and representatives of Mahidol University, Burapha University, Thaksin University and King Mongkut's Institute of Technology North Bangkok.

The institutions would transfer their assets, budget and university incomes to be in line with the start of the new fiscal year on October 1, 2008. He said they would still need to observe the old budget-withdrawing protocols during the two-month period before they become autonomous.

The new budget allocation should be in place because the old protocol still had many categories of funding, while the autonomous universities would receive a budget from the government under the "general subsidy" category. He said the universities would not have to return the leftover money at the end of fiscal year.

Sumet said he asked the four universities to negotiate with the Budget Bureau within two weeks to conclude the issue of subsidy categories.

As the university autonomy draft bill requires university executives to resign from the civil service and become university employees, the government must provide them with a 60 per cent salary increase because the status change means they would be cut from civil servant welfare.

Sumet said Bt148 million would be needed to facilitate the status change of 570 executives of the four universities; comprising four presidents, 96 vice-presidents and deans, and 470 deputy deans and department heads.

The authority does not know how many of the 70,000 non-executive officials would need to quit the civil service to get a salary hike.

The Nation