Second-Order Change Without First-Order Change 77
and “English” programme to the forefront of the debate. While the annual
tuition fee for the Thai programme is around 44,000 baht, the fee for the
bilingual programme is almost 1.2 million baht. In a meeting between
faculty members and student representatives, advocates of the bilingual
programme openly admitted that the reason for creating the new bilingual
programme is because “the Faculty needs to generate extra income”
(Interview, 5 October 2014). Although the administrator has strongly
supported the bilingual programme to gain extra income, the plan was
controversial and contested by students and academics in the faculty
because the curriculum for the two programmes were almost identical.
The difference between the two was in the language of instruction such
that faculty members had to teach the same subject twice, in English
and in Thai. In fact, a student representative argued that the language
of instruction should not be used as the selling point of the lucrative
bilingual programme:
because the subjects we are studying are comprised of technical terms,
which are mostly in English, it does not make sense to have a bilingual
programme. The content of our lecture is in English anyway. Of course
you cut out the Thai word at the end of each sentence (Interview,
5 October 2014).The argument on justice, quality and effectiveness has been put forward by
the group resisting the higher costs for the bilingual programme. Firstly, it
is unfair for students in the bilingual programme to pay so much more for
the title of “bilingual programme”, while all the curriculum is similar to
that of the Thai programme. Secondly, there are issues of quality education
and its effectiveness. Ultimately, lecturers have to teach the same subject
twice, which increases their workloads and would affect the existing
“Thai programme”. Nevertheless, the fact that there are students who
are willing to pay so much more reflect the growing market demands for
anything “international” and anything “English” without questioning the
link between that and the quality of education.
This case is also reflective of the weak state capacity to ensure the
quality of international programmes. Currently, although the OHEC has
not approved this bilingual dentistry programme, its advocates are using
the legal loophole to establish the programme. Given that the state has
delegated greater autonomy to each institution, the advocates of this
bilingual dentistry programme argued that it is the same curriculum as the
already approved Thai programme except that it is taught in a different