More and more doctoral programmes are starting up while their quality is coming under questioning. Leading universities are trying new ways to ensure that they can provide such programmes with enough quality.
Kitti Phothikitti, dean of the graduate school at Assumption University, said the university focused on attaining both local and international education standards.
To win worldwide recognition so the university's doctoral students can study abroad, the university's educational quality must be accepted internationally, he said.
"Assumption got international acceptance from universities in many countries, such as the US, UK, Germany and France, and before being accredited, we needed to improve the quality of our doctoral programmes.
"We also follow the quality assurance system of the Higher Education Commission, providing quality lecturers, enough facilities and enough research databases," he said.
Representatives from the commission and experts from other universities had been invited to join a committee revising the curriculum before Assumption's university council decided to open each programme to show transparency.
The university always reported to the commission when each of its 16 doctoral programmes was opened.
Assumption did not rush to open several popular programmes without considering its readiness to compete with other universities when more and more people are opting to complete doctoral studies, he said.
"Mainly, we considered global market needs and the country's needs, our personnel's qualifications and students' career paths to ensure that each new programme won't be useless before making the decision to open new programmes," he said.
The university also emphasises new students' qualifications. It recruits competent students eligible for study in each field with demonstrated proficiency in English.
"Assumption is not the kind of university where students just pay the tuition and can easily obtain a doctoral degree," he added.
Chulalongkorn University has invited outside veterans to analyse the curriculum before proposing each doctoral programme to its academic committee and then to its academic policy committee for consideration before the university council approves, said Pornpote Piumsomboon, dean of the graduate school.
Chulalongkorn also reports to the Higher Education Commission when opening every programme as well as implements an internal quality assurance system with each faculty reporting its performance to the university every four or five years, he said.
"The commission inspects our education quality every year while the university's Social Research Institute has evaluated employers' satisfaction after they retain our bachelor, master and doctoral graduates for four years. This is how we evaluate our educational quality," he said.
Of the 2,000 lecturers at Chulalongkorn, 75 per cent have PhDs. More than 130 lecturers teach over 500 doctoral students at the Faculty of Education, 400 teach 300 doctoral students at the Faculty of Science and 330 teach 260 doctoral students at the Faculty of Engineering.
Since Chulalongkorn is concerned about quality, several pro¬cedures have been devised to screen the quality of each curriculum.
Other universities should not let "students just pay and easily complete degrees" because it would cause people to lose trust in the education system.
When doctoral graduates cannot work up to employers' expectations, then doctoral diplomas would be just worthless paper, he added.
