Thailand is not utilising the full potential of the AIT

Whether it is a case of benign neglect, lack of vision, or something else, one thing is certain: the country is not exploiting the enormous educational, research and outreach potential of AIT.  

Year after year AIT has been contributing to the development of Thailand by educating talented Thai students in ways that compliment the Kingdom’s dream to construct a self-sufficient, knowledge-based society. It has a direct role in elevating human resource development in Thailand. Study the faculty profiles of many Thai universities, and one can see AIT’s imprint.  

But curiously, the international institute, located in the Science Park enclave in Pathum Thani province, too often finds itself looking at the government for support. 

Consider the numbers: Thailand is now home to 4,830 AIT Masters and PhD graduates, or 27 per cent of AIT’s 18,000 alumni living in 108 countries. These professionals have assumed public positions such as minister, permanent secretary, supreme commander of the armed forces, and governor of the Bank of Thailand. Today’s AIT graduates are a who’s-who of chairmen, CEOs and managing directors of well-known companies, as well as governors of state enterprises, university rectors, and directors-general.

This is a substantial return for the financial support from the Thai government. Three-quarters of the 330-acre campus’ infrastructure has come in donations from countries such as the US, Japan, Australia, Germany, France, Korea, Finland and New Zealand. Most international students at AIT receive scholarships from third countries, meaning Thailand largely benefits as the host country.

The brainchild of one of the country’s outstanding statesmen, Pote Sarasin, then secretary-general of SEATO, and created in 1959 by Royal Decree of His Majesty the King, AIT was once the sole graduate school of engineering in a region where none had formerly existed. Its lineage is tied to the likes of national luminaries Puey Ungphakorn, Thanat Khoman andAnand Panyarachum, past AIT chairmen all.

According to a 2010 World Bank report, in 2006 Thailand was home to 16,000 international students in higher education, which is less than 0.01 per cent of its student body. AIT, with its 1,400 international students out of a total of 2,300, makes it the largest concentration of foreign graduate students in Thailand. The support from AIT partner countries enables AIT to radiate a magnetic pull on countless gifted Asian graduate students to opt for Thailand. These students pay approximately Bt700 million in tuition fees in Thailand. Over 18,000 graduates have spent two years or more of their lives in Thailand, and 28,000 short course trainees have spent many weeks here.

For more than five decades, AIT has boosted the government’s efforts to make Thailand an international higher learning hub. In doing so, AIT became a nexus for nurturing home-grown capabilities relevant to Thailand’s needs.

Thanks to its network of 330 national and international partners, AIT acts as a key portal for the infusion of ideas and technology into Thailand. According to the Thailand Research Fund, AIT is the country’s top per capita research institute. In 2010, it operated more than 450 research projects valued at Bt1.7 billion, and its operational turnover was Bt1.2 billion.

So it’s puzzling that Thailand does not capitalise more fully on this plum of an opportunity right in its own backyard, and leverage the influential, independent, international, non-profit institution by contributing more to AIT. This would support its national higher education aspirations as well as aid Thailand’s soft diplomacy globally. 

Asia’s threats in the 21st century stemming from climate change, rapid urbanisation and the competition for resources like food and water will require responses every bit as visionary as those of HE Pote Sarasin half a century ago. Thus, the recent establishment of AIT as an international inter-governmental institute of higher learning marks the beginning of a new era for AIT. 

Today AIT is at a crossroads. Given its past and present contributions to the country, the government should s see the inherent value-added that AIT brings to higher education in Thailand, and fund it accordingly. As an old saying goes: “You don’t always know what you have, until it’s gone.”