Universities' hostility to assessment results

Having released the results of its second round of assessments of higher-educational institutes, barely-disguised hostility has developed between the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (ONESQA) and many of Thailand's universities.

Having been established since 2000, ONESQA and its assessment criteria have yet to win trust and respect from leading educational institutes. Indeed, some are so upset with the latest assessment results that they are suggesting the public organisation needs improvement.

Kasetsart University (KU)'s president Vudtechai Kapilakanchana said that although he welcomed an assessment of his university by an outsider, he believed ONESQA should definitely change its assessment criteria.

"For example, it would be better if ONESQA assessed each of our campuses based on its true category," Vudtechai said.

Currently, KU has four campuses, and some of them were founded to support government policies to extend educational opportunities to less-privileged students.

ONESQA decided to assess KU's quality based on the overall performance of its four campuses, so KU has ended up trailing behind some newer and less-known higher-educational institutes on the ONESQA list.

"It's very unfair to us," Vudtechai said.

He also suggested that ONESQA's criteria on research should be improved.

"The current criteria focus on research [being done] in just a few areas only," he said.

The president of King Mongkut's University of Technology Thon Buri, Kraiwood Kiattikomol said ONESQA had put his institute in the "good" category, and not in the "very good" one.

"But I am not surprised, because ONESQA's criteria focus on just some fields of research," he said, echoing Vudtechai's opinions.

"Our university has produced research in various fields," Kraiwood said.

He said that although he recognised ONESQA's assessment, he had no plans to change his university's development guidelines based on the assessment results.

"The ideas behind ONESQA's assessment may be far different from ours," Kraiwood said.

 King Mongkut's University of Technology Thon Buri is already named a national research university.

ONESQA's acting director Somwang Pitiyanuwat said he believed leading universities paid little attention to his organisation's assessment results.

In the second round of higher-educational institute assessments, ONESQA surprised many educators when it gave Mahanakorn Technology University a higher score than well-established universities like Chulalongkorn and Mahidol.

The leading institutes have easily shrugged off the scores on the grounds that their focus was on international rankings. However, Somwang is quick to remind them of the importance of ONESQA's work.

"The government has already announced it will allocate subsidies to universities based on ONESQA's assessment results," he said.

ONESQA plans to begin a third round of assessments among universities next year.

In response to comments that the organisation needs improvement, Somwang said ONESQA planned to adjust its assessment criteria.

"We will give much weight to the quality of graduates," he said. "We are going to ask various companies how graduates from each university fare at work."

He said he did not think ONESQA should apply different sets of criteria for each campus of a university.

"No matter how many campuses a university has, you should ensure that every one of them has good quality," he said, adding that ONESQA's requirements were just minimum requirements.

Somwang said all universities should focus on improving their institutes rather than criticising ONESQA's work.

Vudtechai said the assessment principles of ONESQA would eventually discourage universities from reaching out to students in rural provinces.

"In the future, no institute will want to open campuses out of town," he said.