Hope the Songkran holiday was a touching one with
love from family and friends ka.
I read a new book on, ‘The Tertiary
Education Imperative: Knowledge and Skills for Development’ by
Jamil Salmi, 2017 and thought of our Thailand 4.0, which emphasizes
on creativity and innovation.
The book quoted the new OECD Innovation Strategy
(2015a) about it and I think it’s useful for us to consider the following
characteristics:
· “A skilled
workforce that can foster new ideas and generate new technologies, bring
them to the market, and implement them in the workplace, and that
is able to adapt to technological and structural changes across society.
· A sound business
environment that encourages investment in technology, that enables
innovative firms to experiment with new ideas, technologies and business
models, and that helps them to grow, increase their market share and
reach scale.
· A strong and
efficient system for knowledge creation and diffusion that invests in
the systematic pursuit of fundamental knowledge.
· Policies that
encourage innovation and entrepreneurial activity.
· A strong focus
on governance and implementation. The impact of policies for innovation
depends heavily on their governance and implementation, including the trust
in government action and the commitment to learn from experience.”
Very challenging dimensions from national economic
policies and practice to systems and environment ka! We tend to paint many
beautiful policies with inadequate synergy and continuity of qualified
workforce ka.
Can our higher education community speed itself up fast
enough ka?
As I have a firm belief in internationalization of education
to sharpen our workforce’s capabilities, it was good to be confirmed by Philip
G Altbach and Hans de Wit in an article on, ‘Revolutions ahead in
international student mobility’, University World News. April 7, 2017 Issue
No. 454.
Despite changes particularly in the West, the authors state
that universities remain committed to internationalization.
They understand that knowledge is global, that international
students are important both to the education mission and in some cases to
the financial 'bottom line', that hiring the best brains available globally
to serve on faculty is necessary not only to ensure quality and to bring
intellectual and social diversity to an institution, but in some cases to fill
hiring gaps where domestic scholars are unavailable.
Unarguably, more international students are needed for a few
good reasons but definitely not for the financial aspect as the highest priority.
One favorable indicator of our IZN is to recruit best brains of students and
faculty so as to live up to our successful higher education missions and
Thailand 4.0.
Universities with an autonomous status need to be bold
to create cross –cultural environments, facilities, and incentives that can
attract best international students and retain high quality pool of
international faculty alike.
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