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Thailand’s Policy on Higher Education Research
Thailand’s education policy through the main national agency, the OHEC, is focus-
ing on the access to and equality of higher education. In the area of Higher Education,
as a discipline, emphasis is placed on Instruction and Curriculum Development and
Quality Assurance. Therefore, the OHEC’s key mission has been the promotion of
research. Examples of these areas of research that are promoted by the OHEC are
the development of Qualification Framework, Higher Education Reform and
Curriculum Development (OHEC 2008a). More concrete plans to promote
Education or Higher Education research as a national policy agenda, however, are
still nowhere to be seen with the exception of the NRU project mentioned in section
“The role of higher education in promoting teaching, learning and research”. In
addition, the key characteristic of the OHEC’s policy towards strengthening the
country’s research in higher education is to boost the research capacity of the coun-
try through the selection of “winners” among HEIs and CoEs. In a way, the policy
helped strengthen research in research-intensive universities, especially those
selected as national research universities. However, the ability of some other public
and Rajabhat universities in promoting research without the support from the
OHEC remains in question.
Thailand’s OHEC came up with the national policy to boost research efforts in
HEIs in the country in the year 2000. This effort was jointly undertaken with the
Science and Technology Postgraduate Education and Research Development Office
(PERDO) and was repeated in 2012 under the NRU projects. The idea was to select
Table 15.1 Main distinctions between Rajabhat universities and research-intensive universities
Policies towards
Higher Education
research Rajabhat universities Research-intensive universities
Courses and
programmes* Subject-based, especially
for Primary Education* In accordance with the institutional
missions
Research * Focuses on Pedagogy,
Education or School
Management* Wide range of research on Education
and Higher EducationIndicators in
Higher Education
research* Limited Higher Education
research* Robust research on Higher Education
including such areas as Educational
Management, as well as Teaching and
Learning* Limited publication on
Higher Education*
* Higher Education is offered as
postgraduate degrees
* Publication on Higher Education is
noted
Types of Higher
Education
research* Mainstream research
including Pedagogy,
Curriculum and Instruction
Development especially in
Basic Education* Higher Education research is evident
especially in the area of Pedagogy,
Curriculum and Instruction Development,
Comparative Studies on Different Systems
of Education and Higher Education PolicyN.S. Dhirathiti