AIT is no longer competitive
Play
Re: "Made in the image of Thailand", Opinion, May 23.
To suggest, as Said Irandoust does, that AIT was made in the image of Thailand is to misunderstand history. AIT was made by Seato in the image of the Cold War. At that time, and for some time thereafter, AIT was an unusual star in Asia’s higher-education system. From the mid-1980s onwards the global, regional and local higher-education environments in which AIT functions have radically changed.
AIT has failed to recognise these changes and effectively respond to them. Consequently AIT has become increasingly irrelevant, and now for obscure reasons is seeking to change its status in Thailand. What evidence is there that, by changing its status to an inter-governmental organisation, AIT will clearly benefit as a university?
It may well have taken time for AIT to progress the changes to its status that Said Irandoust, but few others, desire. However, most importantly, this process has taken place in a vacuum wherein there has been scant attention to the crying need to restore AIT’s lost academic capital and ensure its competitiveness. This is a major failure of governance and management.
Today AIT does not have the capacity to become a “truly international player in the higher-education field”. For many years AIT has been overtaken by its competitors: Thailand’s and the region’s leading universities. Indeed, AIT has increasingly become a liability within the Thai higher-education system and a potential huge drain on Thailand’s resources.
AIT’s recent encounter with the private-sector educational provider Laureate has been a last-ditch and desperate attempt to part-privatise the organisation. Is the fact that Laureate has not chosen to pursue matters with AIT an indication of AIT’s current educational value?
To suggest, as Said Irandoust does, that those who question the behaviour of AIT’s management have hidden agendas is, I believe, symptomatic of an organisation unable to deal with free and open discussion, which is essential to deciding AIT’s future, which may include its closure.
John Belcher
Tokyo
