Industry-Oriented Graduate Programs in Thailand: A Review

Abstract

In 2011, the World Bank upgraded Thailand’s income categorization from a middle-income economy to an upper-middle income one. Indeed, spanning half a century from the early 1950s, Thailand had been regarded as one of the most successful world economies, with annual GDP growth hovering close to 10 % in the early and mid-1990s. However, the recent performance of Thailand has been quite the opposite, with an 11-year average annual growth of only about 4 % dating from 1997. This decline, coupled with lower medium-term growth prospects, indicates fundamental problems with the country’s current state of development, raising the possibility that Thailand might now be falling into a “middle-income trap” (MIT) (Jitsuchon 2012). Some would even argue that Thailand has already been caught in a MIT for more than 20 years, as it has been unable to compete against advanced economies while also facing increasing competition from lower income economies (Phongpaichit and Benyaapikul 2012). The main cause of this is believed to be the continued dependence of Thailand on the “cheap labor” development model with a low level of technological innovation. One of the reasons for Thailand to be perpetuating this mode of development is that the Thai education system has been unable to equip graduates with relevant skills to meet the challenges of global competition, be they technical skills or soft skills such as thinking skills, communication skills, and leadership (Jitsuchon 2012). In engineering education in particular, the tightly structured and teacher-directed nature of education has been turning out graduates that generally lack strong analytical and problem-solving skills needed for the real world (Ziguras 2001; Ku et al. 2005). A low level of R&D activities and spending, which has been stagnated at 0.2 % of GDP for a number of years, is another hindrance for the country to advance to the next level of competition where more product and process innovation is needed (Jitsuchon 2012).