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Hehehe! Kuson, no, the Srithanonchai here is definitely a different character. I do like the sound of the name though – maybe a talented writer could reinvent Srithanonchai in a novel (or a popular Thai soap). Makes me wonder where the “Thaksins” of the past 6-7 years are geographically born.

Bangkok Post, 29 July 2008

Educators worry over lack of quality control
Many institutes not doing a good job

SIRIKUL BUNNAG
The number of students may have crossed the two million mark, but the news does not sound good for regulators of tertiary education who were already fretting about the poor quality.
Each year the country’s high schools together produce about 700,000 graduates, of which about 70% go on to pursue further studies in public or private universities.
Over two million of them are now pursuing diplomas, a bachelor’s degree or higher university education.
The number of students has doubled and the number of courses has increased 10-fold over the last decade.
The Higher Education Commission (HEC), however, sees the jump in quantity as a looming danger for the education system.
“The increase is too fast-paced. It seems as if all the Mathayom 6 (grade 12) students were fit to continue their university studies, as their performance was not being taken into account,” Higher Education Commission secretary-general Sumate Yamnoon admitted.

He pointed out that in general the O-Net and A-Net scores of students from Mathayom 4 to 6 levels were well below average in all subjects. The poor results should be taken as a warning by educators that students needed to be better prepared for undergraduate degrees.
“Our process to screen students for higher education is problematic,” Mr Sumate said.
The students alone should not be blamed for the poor scores, as easy opportunities presented by both public and private colleges and universities were also contributing to the problem.
Over the past six years, the number of courses on offer has jumped from 235 to over 2,000 . But this was not matched by the quantity of lecturers.
“The number of lecturers did not increase. In fact, it was the other way round, as universities have a policy of cutting down their personnel,” Mr Sumate said.
Instead of hiring full-time lecturers, most universities now prefer part-timers, because no extra benefits are involved.
The problem was serious at the Rajabhat and Rajamangala universities. Before being upgraded to universities in 2003, the two institutes offered only graduate diplomas and undergraduate degrees, he said.
“The HEC is trying its best to improve the quality of lecturers by making 1,000 scholarships available each year for doctorate degrees.
“But no one from Rajabhat and Rajamangala has so far qualified for them because their GPA at the undergraduate level is below 3.00,” he said.
Somwung Pitiyanuwat, director of the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (ONESQA), agrees with him.
The agency’s own evaluation had found that many universities were employing lecturers whose grade point average was 2.5 or lower.
That was not acceptable in the past when the GPA of at least 3.0 was needed by those wanting to become university dons, he said.
It was probably because university lecturers began to enjoy “too much freedom”, he said, as there was no mechanism to assess their teaching standards.
The HEC had issued warnings to colleges and universities whose courses, lecturers, tests and evaluations it found were not up to standard.
Only some have bothered to make improvements, it said.
The end result is that degrees handed out by these institutes are not recognised, he said.
One such institute which made the headlines was Srisophon College in Nakhon Si Thammarat last year, where 12 of the students were unable to receive their degree certificates after the standards office found the Computers for Business course at the private university was below par.
Five or six programmes at other colleges and universities have also been rejected, Mr Sumate said. Many students sued their universities after failing to get their professional certificates to pursue their careers as a result of the substandard courses.
As the agency is directly responsible for all forms of education beyond the high school level, the commission cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the existing flaws.
Efforts on quality control have been inadequate, he said.
Among the stricter new measures on quality control to be introduced by the HEC by 2010 would be a requirement that all the available courses at private and public universities be accredited before they are offered to students.
The HEC now only monitors the programmes run by private colleges and universities, because all courses at state universities have to be approved by the university council first before they are introduced.
Public universities will no longer be left untouched under the new plan. “Universities, private or public, should be evaluated by the same bodies,” he said.
One reason behind the low quality of undergraduates is a commercial drive by universities.
They want money from students and that could be another reason why many of them are using shopping centres as their branches, Mr Somwung said.
“Universities in other countries earn most of their revenue from research and training projects. The only source of income from education is to charge non-resident students a higher tuition fees,” he said.
Thai universities were doing just the opposite, because students were their main source of income, even if the quality had to be sacrificed.
“Funds from the government to support them were insufficient,” he added.
The ONESQA has estimated that no more than 10 universities in the country, all of them public, have solid financial backing to stand on their own feet by generating revenue from their assets, including property and human resources.
“If they are not offered adequate financial support, there is no way you will see an end to low-quality universities in the country as they have to fight for their survival,” Mr Somwung said.Public universities must be strictly controlled by the university council. Politicians had interfered with their management for a long time until the present constitution banned them from sitting on the council.
The ONESQA will assess all off-campus programmes for bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees run by universities in 2008 and will reject them if they are found substandard.
The agency says more than 100 of them are being targeted, including a university in the eastern provinces which has only 3,000 students, but has opened 28 learning centres by claiming that it had more than 10,000 students.
The ONESQA refused to name the university.

Sidh: “to avoid discussing politics at all costs if he wants a good time!” Good advice indeed, in particular when one talks with the “wrong” people (and one cannot always know in advance what or who is wrong in which situation, unfortunately). My physiotherapist today talked about gender–homo, lesbo, bisex, transvest, transsex–, and whether these were acceptable or not, and what she would do if she had a child who wanted to have a sex-change operation. Altogether a less unpleasant topic then politics, I’d say…

Kuson: Some time ago, I read an English translation of the Srithanonchai tales. The one you mentioned (clean your brother inside out) thouroghly disturbed me, and I also found it rather tasteless and gross. So, I think, I am not a Srithanonchai of this kind. Till Eulenspiegel, as far as I remember from my childhood days, is an altogether much funnier character. I am not a legal Srithanonchai either. I haven’t heard or read about anybody referring to Thaksin as a Srithanochai.

29 July 2008
“…price of the price of tea?” Ahem!
My comment stands and doesn’t need twisting. Nor do I need assurance. Nor do I understand where this “As for the rest of you academics, what more can one expect from people who bow to tyranny in order to keep their careers going smoothly. If you told the truth you wouldn’t get past Suvarnobhumi!” came from? A knight to Bishop 5 move?
The people bowing to tyranny are those that back up the likes of Thaksin, Samak and who want to retain certain ‘organizations’ for the so-called benefit of the nation and the people. ‘Edifice lovers’ they might be called. But why belabor the obvious?
Let’s stick to common sense.

An Aside Story: Not Related to This Thread

Sidh, I’m not sure what “wooly cuty” is either- googled it, and it came back to this thread! Must be a local slang for something.

But I googled “Srithanonchai”, and he who claims this name, if he did so after knowing, what it means in Thai, is a not-so-moral character;

“A comparative study of Till Eulenspiegel and Srithanonchai as trickster tales / Siriporn Sriwarakan
р╕Ыр╕╡ 1999
book jacket
р╕кр╕▓р╕гр╕░р╕кр╕▒р╕Зр╣Ар╕Вр╕Ы This thesis has two main objectives: to make a comparative analysis of Till Eulenspiegel and Srithanonchai in terms of their trickster tale characteristics and to compare their protagonists and antagonists. The study shows that while the two tales have their own distinctive elements, they have some characteristics in common. Firstly, both tales originated in the oral tradition,… Secondly, they share common motifs of literal interpretation, tricks, impossible tasks and uncleanliness. Thirdly, both also have similar techniques of jokes; namely word playing (using words vaguely and playing with homophones) and conceptual witty joking (playing psychological tricks, using faulty reason and asking no-answer questions). However, since they originated in different social and cultural contexts, these two tales have some characteristics peculiar to themselves. Firstly, the role and social status of the protagonist and antagonist in each tale are different from their counterparts in the other. Till Eulenspiegel acts as an “outsider” and leads a free lifestyle. Srithanonchai acts as an “insider” and becomes a famous nobleman. Till’s opponents are mostly craftsmen while Srithanonchai often has conflicts with his king. Secondly, the sex motif is found only in Srithanonchai. Thirdly, each trickster uses different strategies in his word plays: Till Eulenspiegel plays with ironical words and social formulae whereas Srithanonchai plays with idioms, obscene words and synecdoche. Trickster tales play not only an entertaining role but also a psychological one for the people in each society. They are, therefore, valuable subjects for comparative analysis as universal products of intellectual creation”

For example of a “Srithanonchai” tale: Srithanonchai was told by his parents to babysit his little brother many times. One time he gets lazy and ‘smart’ after being told “to wash your brother inside and out”. He kills his sibling, skins his brother and washes his sibling’s internal intestines, to the shock of his parents, and to the dark entertainment of Srithanonchai. Its quite tasteless, ironic ‘jokes’, and the name is used in a bad connotation. Another information is Thaksin is often called a “Srithanonchai”.

But I will not and won’t connect this character to the “Srithanonchai” in this thread, if the behaviour is different and if it is shown in any other form, as any “Adolf” could be a very good person, but one bad apple “Adolf Hitler” spoils it once.

Sidh: The tediousness of your responses is evident yet again. I was not being any more or less even-handed than in the past. It is a pity that there is not more even-handedness on the part of PADites. If you watch ASTV you see no such characteristic and instead you see rather rabid statements of hate and incitement to actions of all kinds, legal and illegal. I have said numerous times that physical violence must be decried, whoever perpetrates it. I have condemned the war on drugs murders and other TRT human rights abuses. I also condemn PAD for incitement to violence, calling for a coup, for breaking the law, for calling for the military and the king to intervene and for a determined campaign to provoke violence. This is not to mention (again) all of the state violence that has been ignored for donkeys years and where some of the perpetrators are now on the PAD side.

karmablues: Get the rabies shots now. I asked a question that was a real one. Some blogs reported that there was no death and had links to press reports. Apparently, at least according to some press reports yesterday, no one was killed. You now say that a body was destroyed by the police. Any reports of this anywhere? Or are you making this up? I have no way of knowing. See if you can limit your rage a little and just provide the links/references.

Nicholas–

Assuming this is the one that took all the famous head shots, that photographer is pretty well known. He was ten years old when he joined (for lack of a better term) the Khmer Rouge. They sent him to China to learn basic photography. He would still have been a young teenager when he did the photos, but I don’t think he was a soldier before that.

This was a rare article to note that Hun Sen defected from the Khmer Rouge. Typical, though peculiar, is that it doesn’t mention that Khmer Rouge troops, with Thai help, fought Hun Sen’s for more than ten years. Most of that time, he had the help of Vietnamese troops. (The NYT’s Seth Mydans seems to do a Khmer Rouge story about once a month–it’s his only Cambodia story–but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him mention the civil war or Vietnamese occupation.) A lot of these people in Anlong Veng must have relatives that were killed or wounded during that war. Seems to me that it’s newsworthy that they now appear to support the CPP so strongly.