279Additionally, trends of recent research on university governance have also taken
into account the shift of Education, including Higher Education, from a public to a
commercialised commodity. Therefore, the strategies in offering the educational
services are tilted towards the demand rather than supply side. Research in such
areas as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for improving efficiency in
HEIs, Student Satisfaction Improvement or Organisational Communication and the
increase of enrolment has increasingly attracted the attention of national funding
agencies (Deeprasert 2008 ; Patanasitubol 2010 ). Other areas that have gained atten-
tion among researchers and also among HEI administrators are the areas of
Organisation Culture, Organisational Commitment and Engagement, Quality of
Life and Work Morale in HEIs (Kan-asa 2007 ; Noichun 2007 ). These research top-
ics have spread widely through several layers of Higher Education research, from
in-house research within HEIs conducted in the format of Routine to Research
(R2R) by HEI supporting staff, governmental organisations relating to Higher
Education, undertaken as pure academic research under degree programmers or as
designated by funding agencies.
The third category of Higher Education research in Thailand is Comparative
Higher Education Policy. This subarea of research has gained attention, not only
among scholars in higher education policy but also practitioners and administrators
in the governmental Higher Education sector. This occurred specifically during the
latter half of the 1990s, because it was during this time period that the movement to
reform the Higher Education sector occurred. Therefore, most of the research in this
area had been mainly comparative cases and lessons learned from conducting stud-
ies in several Higher Education systems in countries like Japan, Australia, New
Zealand, Finland, Hong Kong, the UK, Singapore, Malaysia and some other coun-
tries in the European Union (Krongkaew 2005 ). It might be important to note that in
this time period when research on comparative Higher Education flourished, the
main funding agency was the ONEC as its main function was to offer recommenda-
tions for possible reform of the Higher Education sector in Thailand.
Another source of funding for comparative research on Higher Education in
Thailand is development agencies such as the World Bank, the Asian Development
Bank or a regional Higher Education organisations like SEAMEO RIHED, where
published research monographs and edited volumes could be found in areas such as
Higher Education Governance in Asia or the comparative cases on career develop-
ment of Higher Education personnel or the lessons learned from the harmonisation
of Higher Education for Southeast Asia (UNESCO 2006 ). It is worth mentioning
that comparative research in Higher Education in Thailand is still very limited and
has not gained much interest among either domestic research funding agencies or
individual scholars.
The fourth group of research topics focuses on Human Resource Development in
Higher Education. This area of research interest is the most popular among practitio-
ners as Higher Education in the country has undergone tremendous change through
the 1999 reform and the changing status of the Higher Education sector to a more
autonomous style of management. Under the new autonomous governance system,
Higher Education personnel in Thailand, both academics and general staff, are sub-
15 Higher Education Research in Thailand: Current Trends and Development