The Lesson from the Educational Risk Management Experience of Thai Public University

Abstract

The objectives of this research were firstly, to study the situation, cause and result of educational risk and secondly, to study the lesson from the educational risk management experience of Thai public university. This research used qualitative method and studied in the form of phenomenology methodology. The data was collected from the key informants; the experienced faculty executives and the others who related to the university management of one public university by using In-depth Interview, analyzing from narrative data and applying analysis with the literature reviews to explain the occurrence.

The research found that 1. The situation of educational risk showed in the phenomenon of declining entrance students, lower graduated student quality and poor performance in educational management goals.  For the educational risk cause, the risk of education in this case study came from the competition about private management approach in new born faculties that must run themselves by their own budget. The fact that they had private faculty status under the government regulation encouraged them to create commercial curriculums, whereas left out academic efficiency, personal ethic development, management system, and educational facility budget. Instead of paying attention to academic mission of giving public service to community, the faculty executives aimed to do the marketing competition to promote themselves. And for the educational risk result, all of risk causes above led them to the unproductive faculty samples because of the more consumption expenditure they used but the less effective results they got. 2. The lesson from educational risk management experience of Thai public university showed that while the executive tried to solve current problem, the vision of educational development was still unclear. The strategic policy was also dominated by the leader without having any participation or monitoring. Finally, the main obstacle was lacking internal cooperation and coordination, including having poor supervisor from university executive who set educational policy to the same direction. The research suggested that the university management executives should set the educational risk management policy from listening to community’s notion.  In addition, all faculties must concentrate on giving public services as a main philosophy, not promoting educational business to society.