Many universities offering courses but officials fear they lack staff to properly oversee topquality work.
If you wish to pursue a PhD in Thailand, there are now at least 1,000 programmes for you to choose. A hopeful may be happy about such great availability but many top educators admit they are worried that the quality may be compromised.
"Apparently, some universities rush to open the doctorate programmes when they have no adequate resources to do so," Office of Higher Education Commission (Ohec) deputy secretary general Dr Kamjorn Tatiyakavee said recently.
He said some institutes clearly opened the doctorate courses to appeal to paying students rather than responding to the country's needs. Each of these courses usually cost a student more than Bt500,000 before he or she can acquire a PhD.
Kamjorn said these days, the universities did not rely on just its existing pool academic staff in its efforts to launch doctorate programmes.
"Some universities have now gone after professionals in an interesting field like aviation commerce for their plan to open new PhD courses," he pointed out. To launch a PhD course, a highereducational institute needs only three PhD holders in a related field to develop the curriculum and to serve on a panel to review theses submitted by students.
Such panel means a lot to the quality control of PhD graduates.
Kamjorn's concerns about the quality of PhD programmes in Thailand are not unfounded.
These days, slogans like "Pay your tuition fees and you will successfully complete your courses" accompany the advertisements for many doctorate programmes.
Some institutes have offered to recognise credits from PhD programmes at other institutes and have advertised about cheaper tuition fees in an apparent bid to attract the paying students from elsewhere. Many current PhD students are prominent figures in the society, including those familiar faces in the political scenes.
Ramkhamhaeng University has the highest number of PhD students while Chulalongkorn University offers the greatest variety of PhD courses.
Kamjorn said he was not worried about universities with sufficient resources both in term of academic staff and facilities.
"The problems about quality take place only when the highereducational institutes do not have adequate resources," he said.
Ohec has received reports that the names of some academics, with or without their knowledge, had appeared at more than one institute.
According to Kamjorn, when a lecturer has to review too many thesis projects, he or she definitely cannot go into the detail. "That's how some poor quality work can pass as a PhD thesis and why some PhD graduates are of poor quality," he said.
Kamjorn said some of these poorquality PhD graduates might end up serving as academics or university lectures in the future, thus hurting the quality of new graduates too.
Dr Somwang Pitiyanuwat, who previously headed the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (Public Organisation), said if these graduates ended up with any organisation, they would not be able to contribute fully to that organisation.
"That may hurt the organisation and its other staff members," he said, "In worst cases, these graduates may lead their organisation into the wrong direction".
In a bid to ensure the quality of doctorate courses, the Ohec has now developed a better database to prevent an academic from serving in more than one course. However, Kamjorn reckoned that Ohec could not strictly monitor the quality of the doctorate courses because the decision to open such courses lies largely with the council of each university.
Ohec secretary general Sumet Yamnoon is now pinning hope on the qualification framework, which will soon be launched.
"In response to this framework, PhD graduates must demonstrate deep understanding in theories, knowledgeseeking techniques, ability to tackle complex problems, and more," he had said recently.
