Thai universities drop several points in latest world rankings
The Nation September 10, 2013 1:00 am
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has beaten Harvard and Cambridge to retain its top spot in the 10th annual QS World University Rankings, published yesterday on TopUniversities.com/Rankings2013.
The eight Thai universities ranked in the survey have lost ground from their 2012 positions. The QS rankings this year were the most comprehensive ever as more than 100 universities were added, making it an 800-strong list with 76 countries represented.
They took into account 62,094 academic and 27,957 employer responses, making both surveys the largest of their kind in the world.
The US took 11 of the top 20 positions, but its dominance has eroded since the financial crisis. Of the 83 US universities in the top 400, 64 ranked lower than in 2007/8.
The 43 US public universities in the top 400 lost an average of 20 places since 2007/8, following successive government funding cuts.
In contrast, 70 per cent of the 62 Asian institutions in the top 400 ranked higher than in 2007, but still no Asian institution is in the top 20.
Of the Thai universities who made the listing, two remain in the top 300.
Chulalongkorn University was ranked 239 in 2013, losing several places from its 201 rank in 2012; and Mahidol University getting 283 from 256 last year.
Ben Sowter, chief of research at QS says: "The government's plans to push for a education reform has come at the right time as the rankings show that though Thailand still has two institutions firmly in the top 300, the overall performance of its institutions this year has dropped across all the indicators."
The Nation
British volunteer teachers under the "Thailand English Teaching Project 2013" urged Thai student to constantly practice the English language in order to be fluent and schools to emphasis on communications.
The Education Ministry and the British Council recently joined force to host a farewell party for some 200 British volunteer English teachers at Bangkok’s Ambassador Hotel, after they had been teaching schools nationwide for eight weeks. Many volunteer teachers said they felt happy to get an opportunity to teach children in Thailand and urged the kids to be brave to use English.
One volunteer teacher from Leeds University, Tomas Badger, said he had taught English language in the Mathayom 1 -6 classes at Chiang Mai’s Debsirin School.
"This visit to Thailand is a very good experience and Thailand is the first country in Asia I visited so there were many things that I had to adjust myself to especially the culture. Thai people are very welcoming and always ready to help," he said.
Regarding the difficulty in teaching English to Thai kids, he said the challenge was how to get the students interested and be brave to speak English. He went on that some kids were already interested in the language so they tended to study better than peers and that this interest really made a difference in term of English proficiency among the kids.
As for an advise to Thai schools’ English skill development in preparation for the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015, Badger said the schools should focus first on basic communication skills especially the pupils’ pronunciation because practice made perfect and would allow the kids to learn correctly and be able to use it in real life.
Another volunteer from Bristol University, Nadine Swain, said she served as an assistant teacher for English language at Ban Nong Jek Soi School in Chanthaburi's Kaeng Hang Maeo district. She urged schools to pay attend in develop English skills for students who were academically weak. She also noticed that some students were more fluent in English because they had additionally practiced themselves at home, hence a factor that was as important as schooling was the parents’ supports and the students’ consistent practice.
Swain also said that the eight-week project was very useful to children because it excited the kids to learn English from native speakers and help improve their pronunciation. She urged Thai schools to emphasis on pronunciation and basic communication before anything else.
