QUALITY ASSURANCE POLICIES IN THAI HIGHER EDUCATION

This dissertation explores the perceptions of university administrators concerning internal quality assurance policies administrated by the Office of the Higher Education Commission (OHEC) and the external quality assurance policies administrated by the Office for National Education Standards, and Quality Assessment (ONESQA) in Thailand’s higher education. A pre-developed questionnaire and guided interview questions for the telephone interviews were developed to investigate the administrators’ perceptions toward four aspects of the policy implementation: 1)the current practices of national quality assurance policies, 2) the major components of institutional quality assurance, 3) the roles of state governments and national quality assurance agencies, and 4) the policies’ recommendations. The 80 completed questionnaire surveys of overall surveys distributed to 153 targeted higher education institutions were returned for an overall response rate of 52.3% in addition to 6 administrators participated in the interviews.\ud The findings in this study revealed a consensus exists among the administrators about the current practices of national QA policies. In general, the administrators showed positive perceptions on the presence and objectives of the policies and desire for improvement on the policies’ administration. The major components of institutional quality assurance for Thai higher education derived from analysis of the administrators’ perceptions encompassed QA process, QA system, QA people, budget investment, and QA outcomes. The findings revealed that most administrators held positive views toward the existing role and functions of OHEC and expected OHEC to focus on being a quality management supporter and increasing the effectiveness of the policy administration. Meanwhile, the perceptions toward the ONESQA’s role and functioning were somewhat negative, and many administrators supported ONESQA to seriously reinforce its role as an external QA agency. The statistically significant associations found in this study suggested that public and private universities may view the major components of institutional quality assurance and the existing roles of OHEC and ONESQA differently. The findings also confirmed that quality awareness and collaboration in higher education institutions were very important for the success of the policy implementation. Based on the result of this study, a model for effective QA policy implementation in the Thai higher education system was proposed