This area of Rajabhat Institute Suan Dusit is one of the few on campus which has been relatively untouched by the rapid expansion that has taken place there.
Suan Dusit rector, Dr Sirote Pholputin, has worked hard to make his institute a household name. |
Story and pictures by TERRY FREDRICKSON
You can still find evidence of those early days at Suan Dusit, but you have to know where to look. Probably no educational institution has undergone a greater transformation. With more than 40,000 students, Rajabhat Institute Suan Dusit, co-educational since 1985, is now the largest institution of higher learning in Thailand apart from the open universities of Ramkhamhaeng and Sukhothai Thammathirat.
You would think that with a cramped 31-rai campus and a permanent faculty of less than 300, such remarkable expansion would be almost impossible. You would be right. It has taken some very extraordinary, even unorthodox, measures to make Suan Dusit what it is today.
Leader with a mission
Suan Dusit rector, Dr Sirote Pholputin, has worked hard to make his institute a household name. |
Dr Sirote says he began formulating plans for the new Suan Dusit during his 10-year tenure as the institute’s vice president for academic affairs. “I had observed that the number of students finishing secondary school was increasing each year while the intake in institutions of higher education was static.”
At the same time, says Dr Sirote, “teachers' salaries were increasing each year. Why weren’t their outputs increasing as well? If our salaries were increasing, with enrolments static, it meant that our productivity was declining.”
That situation, he thought, was completely unacceptable, particularly since he believed Suan Dusit had the capacity to make a far greater contribution to Thai education that it was making at the time.
“Our area was small,” he says, “but not our readiness to help. We had particular expertise in the use of technology and we also had a large staff in comparison to the number of students. We also had a wide and diverse number of faculties – considerably more than other similar institutions,” he explains.
To overcome space limitations at the main campus, Dr Sirote decided it was necessary to set up outside branches. "Fortuitously, at that time," he said, "many private vocational schools were having difficulties because their enrolments were declining. One way to assist them was to rent space from them and to help develop their students in parallel with our own.
“So we went ahead and rented the space and made them part of our campus – except that we didn’t call them campuses, we called them educational centres. We then brought our technology in, our people and integrated them into our institution. We sent teachers there and we added to our faculty," he explains.
"We also went upcounty – Prachin Buri, Nakorn Nayok, Payao, Lampang, Korat (masters degree), Nakorn Pathom, and Saraburi. We are about to open in Pitsanulok and are also considering a centre for Trang,” he says.
"Misplaced criticism"
Suan Dusit now has 20 outside centres, all established within the space of five years. According to Dr Padung Phrommoon who oversees this programme, these centres together enrol over 27,000 students, considerably more than the enrolment at the main Bangkok campus. To cope with the bulging numbers, the faculty now numbers 1,400 with all new hires having a minimum of a masters degree.
Not surprisingly, expansion at such breakneck speed has raised eyebrows among many observers who question Suan Dusit’s ability to maintain the quality of its academic programmes.
Such criticism is understandable, says Dr Sirote, but it is also misplaced. “People don’t understand our methods,” he says. “They think it’s the same as other places. They hear us say we have built centres and they think that we just send teachers there and then leave. They don’t realise that we guarantee what we produce.”
The key, he says, is technology. All centres are linked through a high speed fibre-optic network, among the most advanced systems in the country. Without such a network, explains Dr Sirote, the expansion programme would be prohibitively expensive.
Suan Dusit's technologically advanced virtual library draws a regular stream of visitors from around the country. |
“If, for example, we had to set up a resource library in each centre, it would be hugely expensive,” he says. “Instead our main library is a virtual library – a library without books.
“All books are put into our servers, and the outside centres are linked to them through the fibre-optics network. At the same time, they are also linked to the UniNet belonging to the Ministry of University Affairs. In addition, each centre has a physical library, he says, but only for “very basic sources”.
However, the main function of the network, he says, is for video conferencing. Classes taught at the main campus can be simultaneously beamed to thousands of students studying at the outside centres. This is a two-way link, so students at the remote sites can ask questions and enter discussions as readily as the Bangkok students can. It is also possible to originate lessons from the remote sites so students elsewhere can get insights into local cultures.
According to Dr Padung Phrommoon, the institute's provincial centres have helped foster a sense of community among members of the government and private sectors. |
Dr Padung says that the response from upcountry centres, some in provinces where other such educational opportunities do not exist, has been particular gratifying. Provincial governors and local leaders tell him their Suan Dusit centre has helped foster a sense of community.
Previously, he said, there was a tendency for government officials, soldiers, police and people employed in the private sector to remain largely apart. Now that many of these people have become Suan Dusit classmates, however, new friendships and networks have begun to form.
Furthermore, since these classes bring together people of all ages from young adults to senior citizens, there is a new understanding of the concept of lifetime learning that the government is trying so hard to promote.
Balancing the books
If you have been following the situation in government universities and the Rajabhat institutions for the past several years, you will know that government funding has become increasingly scarce. The level of permanent staff – government officials – has been frozen for the past five years and many institutions have been forced to tighten their belts considerably.
How then has Suan Dusit managed to carry out its aggressive expansion plan? According to Dr Sirote, it hasn’t been done with government funding. That now accounts for only twenty percent of Suan Dusit’s annual budget.
“This year we are receiving 150 million baht, 51 percent of which goes for salaries and other payments to faculty. If that was all we had, we would have little if anything left for development,” he says.
In fact, he says, “we are actually investing another 800 million baht. Part of it comes from student fees, but we have to go out and find other sources of revenue. We have to survive. We always have to think about what we are going to do to ensure that our organisation survives.”
This, according to Dr Sirote, means determining what activities Suan Dusit does best, investing in the resources necessary to bring them to the highest standard, and entering the market place like any other business.
For example, he says, “we have special expertise in food. We prepare our own food. We have ISO certification.” Thus, he says, it was only natural for Suan Dusit to bid for the catering contract for the Asian games. That contract gave the institution considerable income, but just as importantly, it gave students a learning (and earning) experience in a highly realistic business situation.
 Suan Dusit's modern bakery employs over one hunderd people, many of them former students. |
“We have a state-of-the-art bakery,” says Dr Sirote, “that can supply its products for various functions. Take, for example, funerals in temples. They will have food at each sala. There are 112 temples and 1640 salas. Many people do not want to use the glasses and utensils of the temple itself. Instead, food packages have become popular. We also produce food packages – 45 baht apiece – and we compete with Thai Airways, S&P, and See Fah. It’s a very big market.”
In six month’s time, says Dr Sirote, Suan Dusit will have its own world class school for chefs. Apart from the Oriental Hotel, he says, no one will be able to compete with Suan Dusit’s expertise in this area.
Another source of income is the campus hotel, the Suan Dusit Palace. It was originally established to provide training for students studying in the hotel and tourism faculty. But, says, Dr Sirote, “if we did it in an ordinary way, the students wouldn’t get much from the experience. So instead, we have opted to set up a real hotel, with complete facilities, giving the students the most realistic training experience possible.”
All of these commercial activities, says Dr Sirote, pale in importance compared to the sale of Suan Dusit’s main product: knowledge – information. With its large information science faculty – home of the famous Suan Dusit poll (next week’s learning post topic) – the institute has become one of the country’s most sought-after data-collection and analysis agencies.
Some recent successes include a huge contract for an evaluation of the money spent under the Miyazawa Plan and a 74-million baht contract with the Labour Department to collect data on unemployed workers in 23 municipal areas of the southern provinces. “We used both our Suan Dusit Poll team and another group of students for this project,” Dr Sirote says.
Is it appropriate for an educational institution to enter into such blatantly commercial activities? For Dr Sirote, the answer is obvious. “We get 30,000 applications a year,” he says. “Suppose we accepted only 2,000. What would the others do? If we have the capacity to help them, why don’t we help them?
“We have to sell our knowledge. If we don’t, what are we going to do? And the students, what kind of experience will they have when they graduate? None. They won’t be able to set up businesses. They’ll be employees forever. This is the way I see it.”
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A footnote: I taught at Suan Dusit Teachers College for 10 years from 1971 until 1981. When I left I had no inkling of the major changes that would soon come about. The campus has changed almost beyond recognition. I can still find my old office, but that is about the extent of it. A special thank you to Archarn Narunan Tambamroong, a former Suan Dusit colleague of mine, who helped my visit go smoothly. |
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terryfrd@ksc15.th.com |
