62 Pad Lavankura and Rattana Lao
Lao (2012) argued that in studies of Thai higher education two caveats
are worth mentioning. Firstly, there is a close link between the state and
academic oligarchs in public policymaking. The so-called “academic
oligarchs”, who are mostly administrators of higher education institutions,
have also actively participated in state-level policymaking. In the case of
Quality Assurance (QA), Lao (2012) revealed that the partnership between
the state and academic oligarchs is also evident by their mutual views of
the problems of and solutions to higher education. Their common policy
beliefs come from their management perspectives which are mostly based
on their scientific academic backgrounds. Secondly, however, there are
different fractions and beliefs within the “academic oligarchs”. The two
major fractions are those academics who hold administrative positions and
those who do not pursue the administrative track. While the former has
allied themselves with state priorities and economic-centric preferences,
the latter group is often the one who upholds academic interests.
STATE POLICY ON INTERNATIONALIZATION:
RATIONALES AND REQUIREMENTS
This section traces the trajectory of internationalization policy as
articulated in Thai state documents and analyses the changing rationales
in relation to the international literature. There are different goals which
internationalization of higher education intends to achieve. While some
scholars strongly argued that internationalization can be the goal in itself
(Zha 2003), Knight and De Wit (1999) pointed out that the major rationales
that drive the internationalization process include social/cultural, political,
academic, and economic (p. 174). Knight (2004) further argued that the
rationales also differ at the national and institutional level. At the national
level, the objectives include human resources development, commercial
trade, and social/cultural development. In contrast, at the institutional level,
there are more explicit rationales driving the process such as “academic
standards, income generation, cultural diversity, and student and staff
development”, and the branding, profile and reputation of the institutions
and knowledge production (ibid., pp. 20–21).
Although the rationales are differentiated at the national and
institutional levels, the factors at play are not mutually exclusive. For
example, with increasing attention given to international league tables
and international organizations on quality assessment, both state and