• 
• 

Published on February 26, 2008

A six-day academic conference started yesterday for 100 educators and students from Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Concentrating on developing higher education, the conference will look at Thailand's education reform from the point of the country's development and competitive ability and meeting the labour market's demands.

OHEC secretary-general Sumet Yaemnoon said the conference would covers issues related to the agency's 15-year higher education development plan.

He said the conference could lead to changes in universities, enabling them to better respond to the labour market's demands.

Higher education institutes should work with the business sector to broaden the skills of graduates and develop better competitiveness and better co-operation networks. He said this is what the OHEC had been trying to promote.

Bruno Laporte, manager of the Knowledge and Human Development Group at the World Bank Institute, said the world economy had changed to the point that countries could not just depend on cheap labour for economic growth.

The new generation of worker must be more adaptable, creative and quicker to respond to employers' needs and industry's changes.

Chumpol Phornprapha, chairman of the Thai Chamber of Commerce's committee on human resources development, said many lecturers and educators in universities continued to resist the idea of producing graduates for the business sector and labour market. He said educational institutes should produce higher-performing graduates who can earn a better living.

He pointed out about 30 per cent of Thai students still skipped classes and more than 70 per cent of Thai youths failed Thai-language composition classes.

This had not been rectified and blame was thrown back and forth between educational institutes and the business sector, Chumpol said.

This lack of response from educational institutes to the labour market's needs has led to some companies setting up their own human resource training, among them the Dusit Thani Group, Charoen Pokphand Group and Toyota Motor Thailand Co Ltd, he said.

He urged all sides to work together to improve the career consultation system at universities to help students get better jobs.

The Nation