Abstract
Higher education in Thailand has undergone major changes due to digital disruptions, demographic transitions, and the immense competition which increases the need for continuous education, learning and human resources development. The purposes of this convergent parallel mixed methods study were as follows: (1) to monitor and evaluate humanities and social sciences in scholarship programs in the Thai higher education system; (2) to assess the outcome and the impact of the humanities and social sciences scholarship program; and (3) to provide feedback on how to increase the performance of the program. The quantitative design employed a set of surveys consisting of 114 items with a Cronbach's alpha reliability between .956-.996. The sample consisted of 208 faculty members across Thailand in the humanities and social sciences who received government scholarships. The qualitative data purposively conducted interviews with 27 participants from 12 different universities. The quantitative research showed that the factors related to the program outcomes and impact identified a significant relationship between the program Context, Input, Process, and Outcome and with high correlation coefficient (r) at .579, .522, .459 and .779, respectively. The qualitative research presented comprehensive recommendations to improve the performance of humanities and social science faculty members.
Highlights
Higher Education in Thailand has undergone dramatic changes over decades due to a major shift in educational policies, which include massification [1], internationalization [2] and privatization [3]
It is vital for the higher education commission and other government agencies to offer greater human resources strategies to foster well-being and performance for faculty members to become more competitive in the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA) learning and teaching environment [12, 13]
The barriers to performance of scholarship recipients included study pressure, delayed graduation, difficult life adjustments in foreign countries, a lack of continuous monitoring of progression from affiliated universities and the Office of the Higher Education Commission, an unsuitable budget created without considering the cost-of-living adjustments necessary for living abroad, and the complication of paperwork systems between the Office of the Higher Education Commission and the Office of the Civil Service Commission
Summary
Higher Education in Thailand has undergone dramatic changes over decades due to a major shift in educational policies, which include massification [1], internationalization [2] and privatization [3]. There has been a drastic drop in Universal Journal of Educational Research 9(6): 1124-1133, 2021 enrollment in social sciences and humanities majors since routine jobs will be replaced by various technologies [9]. This phenomenon has demonstrated a negative effect on work engagement [10] and the well-being of faculty members [11]. It is vital for the higher education commission and other government agencies to offer greater human resources strategies to foster well-being and performance for faculty members to become more competitive in the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA) learning and teaching environment [12, 13]
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