The Office of the Higher Education Commission (Ohec) has recently set up a special panel to probe the standards of PhD courses at universities nationwide in a bid to maintain academic standards in doctoral education and weed out those offering sub-standard doctoral study programmes.
The commission has acted in response to concerns over the quality of doctorate courses throughout the country as the number of PhD students ballooned to over 25,000 enrolled in universities last year, compared with 1,380 in 2008 -- increasing by more than 18 times in less than a decade.
According to Ohec data, there are now at least 1,000 PhD programmes in 33 Thai universities available for students to pursue.
Ohec's secretary-general Arporn Kaenwong revealed the body has received information that students in some institutes can now obtain PhD degrees -- usually expected to take a minimum of three years -- in only one year, and many universities clearly started offering the courses to make money rather than as a response to the country's needs.
Ms Arporn said the reason behind the growing number of PhD graduates is that there are no measures in place to control the number of doctorate programmes and doctorate students enrolled. She said universities at present do not rely on only their existing pool of academic staff to launch doctorate programmes but they can also hire professionals in interesting fields.
To launch a PhD course, an institute nowadays requires only three PhD holders in a related field to develop the curriculum and serve on a panel to review theses submitted by students, she said.
Moreover, each university also has its own council that dictates the launch of new programmes and their quality, she said, adding that Ohec has not been able to control them due to decentralisation laws.
"Ohec could not strictly monitor the quality of the doctorate courses because the decision to open such courses lies largely with the council of each university," Ms Arporn said. "What we can do is perform a post-audit evaluation to find out whether the universities have taken in more students than it is allowed or if they really have the number of qualified instructors that they claim."
Ms Arporn said Ohec's special panel has already started to examine some doctoral programmes at universities suspected of providing sub-par courses. The panel is expected to report the results to the committee soon.
She explained if the universities are found to be providing sub-standard courses, they will be temporarily suspended from recruiting new students to the programme until the problem is fixed.