Second-Order Change Without First-Order Change 69
Thai state aimed to increase the number of foreign students to 100,000
(Sinhaneti 2011).
Memorandums of Understandings (MOUs)
In addition to establishing international programmes, Thai public and
private universities have also actively signed MOUs and created joint
programmes with universities from various countries. Thai academics
from public universities have boosted the institutional enthusiasm to sign
MOUs with other foreign institutions:
At the level of institutions, many universities have been proactive in
attending conferences and exhibitions to recruit students and exchange
ideas on the internationalization process. There have been extensive efforts
to sign MOUs in order to integrate the international aspects into Thai
higher education. We are trying to integrate foreign students into Thai
higher education so that our classrooms are also comprised of international
students. This is to create an international culture and allow our students
to interact with other foreign students and also travel to other countries
to explore new experiences (Interview, 9 April 2014).According to a survey conducted by the OHEC (2011), 46 public universities
in Thailand have signed a total of 2,171 MOUs, and 18 private universities
have signed 363 MOUs. In total, Thai institutions have 2,534 MOUs with
other countries. It is worth noting that the majority of MOUs are signed
between Thai public and private institutions with other institutions
within Asia, which accounted for 52.24 per cent of the total MOUs signed.
This indicates that internationalization in Thailand is closely linked to
the regionalization process. A closer scrutiny shows that Japan, China,
the United States, France and Australia are the countries that Thailand
has signed the most MOUs with. In terms of field of studies, official
data show that the five top fields of collaboration between Thai and
foreign institutions are: (1) Language, Culture, Literature and Linguistics
(91 MOUs); (2) Engineering (70 MOUs); (3) Business Administration
(58 MOUs); (4) Science (39 MOUs); and (5) Economics (30 MOUs). Public
universities which have signed the most MOUs with other countries are
Kasetsart University (295 MOUs), Thammasat University (259 MOUs) and
Mahidol University (233 MOUs). For private universities, Assumption
University (138 MOUs), Bangkok University (68 MOUs) and Payap