Private universities among the best

Mr David Brown mistakenly tars all private universities with the same brush, saying that "across the world we have seen the growth of private universities. These are first and foremost business concerns, and the inevitable consequence of this is the compromising of academic standards"

Virtually any list of top universities will include a mix of public and private institutions. For example, the current list of US News gives the places that, using its criteria, have the best 10 MBA programs in the US; only one (U California, Berkeley) is a public institution - all the rest, e.g., Stanford, Harvard, and MIT (ranked 1, 2, and 3, respectively) are private, as are the U of Penn (Wharton), Northwestern, U of Chicago (my alma mater and an unabashed proponent of the free market system), etc.

Employers are neither stupid nor naive. They know that all degrees are not created equal, and so are willing to pay more for quality - and the desire to fill that demand (at a profit, of course), not the desire to churn out the most graduates, is what drives the top schools - whether public or private.

It is a damning indictment of the Thai education system that Thai parents dream of sending their kids to international schools here and the best universities overseas - despite the huge price differential. For example, both Thaksin's and PM Yingluck's graduate degrees are from the US, though not from institutions top-ranked by US News.

Burin Kantabutra

Bangkok