Low salaries make it difficult to retain qualified educators. Students are encouraged to learn and recite facts, not to solve problems, say reformers, who think the entire system needs an overhaul. Thailand universities do churn out a surplus of engineers, with about 10,000 new graduates coming onto the job market every year. But many are not up to scratch, says Sitthichai, the Mahanakon University president. Graduates trained in both information technology and English are scarce.
Most schools concentrate on theory at the expense of practical experience.
But at his school, engineering courses are considered innovative because they give students a chance to get their hands dirty. The government's failure to focus on the country's skills crisis has opened the way for outsiders to lend a hand. On the Amata Nakorn industrial estate, halfway down the highway from Bangkok to Thailand's new industrial heartland development on the eastern seaboard, Walter Kretschmar, the German director of the Thai-German Institute, is trying to make Thai workers as good as any in the world. But like the professors at Mahanakon University of Technology, he says skills must be learned and honed in the shop room, not the classroom. Small firms and even giants like GM pay for their staff to take courses that last anywhere from three days to six months learning and practicing to upgrade their skills to international standards.